Studies in the Out-Lying Fields of Psychic Science. Hudson Tuttle
Читать онлайн книгу.
animal can not be subjected to that test. The life principle escapes before the alembic or retort is brought into requisition. The song of the bird can not be found by chemical analysis. We know that the living being is held together, and dominated over by the strongest forces, and the moment these relax their hold, decomposition commences. What are these forces? Whence do they come? Whither do they go?
Life and Mind.—Taking vital force in its highest expression, in man, it is self-conscious and has independent will. It arises above the atoms of its physical being, above the influences which environ it, and says, I will, and executes that will. I know well that if we here leave physical science for metaphysics, there are philosophers who would not only reason away this force, but the existence of the body itself. They are true intellectual acrobats; amusing jugglers, who throw words instead of painted balls, and confuse by their wonderful dexterity. Yet, after all has been said, we know we exist and have physical bodies. Had we not such bodies the thought of them would never have been fashioned in our minds. As we know the sun will rise, or the night follow, we know we have bodily forms, and are thereby brought in contact with the physical world. It is a fact, and as such can not be reasoned away. In the same manner we are conscious of a mental or spiritual life which arches the physical world as the dome of the sky.
Is the Gulf between Spirit and Matter Bridged?—Here we come to that vague and uncertain realm where spirit touches matter. We leave the coast line of the tangible and seen for the intangible and unseen. There is no bridge over the gulf, which is said to be impassable. Material and spiritual phenomena are united by no common bond, and each stands by itself. The great thought stream has set toward the materialistic interpretation of all spiritual phenomena, or ruled them out of the pale of the believable. If these phenomena are real, if man—the ego—is superior to the oxygen and carbon of his body; if the manifestations of mind are superior to the combustion of tissue in the lungs, then all these manifestations should be amenable to certain laws and conditions, which ascertained, will harmonize them into a perfect system.
The brain is the point of contact between spirit and matter, and as far as the manifestations of that spirit are related to the material world while connected with the physical body, it must be through and by means of the brain. The intimate character of this relation gives strong color to the reasoning based on the material view that the brain produces thought, as the liver produces bile. But such reasoning is from appearance rather than the reality. There is, as Tyndall eloquently expresses, a chasm between matter and mind that can not be passed.
“The passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness is unthinkable. … Were our minds and senses so expanded, strengthened, and illuminated, as to enable us to see and feel the very molecules of the brain; were we capable of following all their motions, all their groupings, all their electric discharges, if such there be; and were we intimately acquainted with the corresponding states of thought and feeling—we should be as far as ever from the solution of the problem, ‘How are these physical processes connected with the facts of consciousness?’ The chasm between the two classes of phenomena would still be intellectually impossible.”
Spiritual Substance.—As the experiments alluded to show that matter may, under certain conditions, take on new properties, ceasing to be matter, in the usual acceptance of that word, the horizon of matter which has been thought to rest over attenuated hydrogen, may extend to infinite reaches beyond, including stuffs or substances which have never been revealed to the senses. As the eye is capable of detecting only a narrow belt of rays, and the ear a scarcely broader belt of sounds, beyond which, on either side, are unknown realms of light and sounds, so we are able to detect only a narrow range of elements; and there may be a realm on one side too gross for recognizance by the senses, and on the other, one too attenuated. Beings fashioned of this attenuated substance might walk by our side unseen, nor cast a shadow in the noon-day sun.
Spirit Ether.—Aside from this spiritual substance, beyond the pale of the most attenuated matter, is the spirit ether. The students of light have found it possible to explain its phenomena only by the hypothesis of an ether, a universal fluid of extreme tenuity, the vibrations of which are interpreted by the eye as light. This ether was at first a dream of the imagination; but, by answering all questions and receiving the verification of mathematics, it has become a demonstrated reality. It is probably the common medium for the transference of electricity, heat, and magnetism as well. It is an illustration of one of the many instances where the Imagination has overreached the Reason in the race of discovery.
In the same manner we may predicate another ether, the medium through which all spiritual phenomena are produced. We may prove the existence of this ether, by the certainty and harmony of the answers it gives, as the existence of the luminiferous ether has been demonstrated. As the great life-giver, we may distinguish it as psycho-ether. It can not be said to be material, for it belongs to the region beyond that recognized as material by our senses. It is the sublimation of matter, vastly more attenuated than light-ether, and thought is propagated in it from thinking centers, as light is in the luminiferous ether from luminous bodies. The qualities of this ether are the possibilities of life and spirit and to it for explanation we refer all psychic phenomena.
What the Senses Teach OF THE World and the Doctrine of Evolution.
Is there more than one World—stuff?—Thus far, with a few exceptions which may be called heterodox, physicists have in their speculations used the term matter as though in ultimate conception there is but one kind of matter and the atoms of that matter are absolutely alike. In other words there is but one stuff of which the cosmos is formed. The senses on which this theory is based do not endorse, but, by their limitation, prove the opposite. We have no means of knowing of sound aside from the ear, which is wonderfully fashioned to receive vibrations and transmit them to the brain; yet its imperfection, caused by the limitations of nerve tissue, reveals the fact that it is cognizant of only a narrow field, either side of which is a wide tract, which to it is profound silence. If a sound wave impinges on the ear with less vibrations than 16½ times in a second it is inaudible; and if the number of vibrations is increased above 38,000 per second, they again lose the power of impressing the ear. There may be insects capable of hearing these high sounds, which to man are silence itself; and the long waves that beat less than 16½ times in a second may be sweet music to some of the lower tribes of animated life.
Perfect as the eye may be as an optical instrument, its range is far less than that of the ear. Only those rays of light having waves 1–39,000th of an inch in length are visible on one side, and the last visible radiations on the other end of the spectrum have wave lengths of 1–575,000th of an inch. This is a narrow limit, and on either side there must be rays, which eyes or nerves differently constructed would receive and interpret, yielding, perhaps, colors unknown to our consciousness. There is a harmony in color waves, like music in sound waves, for as a note blends in one, in all octaves above or below, so light waves, twice or thrice the length of given waves yield the same color impression.
We may regard from the same point of view the sense of taste, the nerves of which have a still narrower range, and are apparently differently affected in animals than they are in man—substances disagreeable to him being relished by them, and of course affecting the taste differently.
We are not sure that there are not senses which appreciate conditions of matter, of which we have no conception. There are insects which apparently have organs bestowing senses unlike our own. Their antennæ have no corresponding organs in the higher animals, and the conception of the world which these give has no analogy in our minds.
As the senses are thus cognizant of narrow belts of sound and light, leaving unknown stretches on either side, so what is called matter may be the narrow range recognized by our finite powers as a whole, on either side of which may lie stuffs of widely different qualities and possibilities.
A