Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887 Part 2

"As an ill.u.s.tration of its methods of dealing with so subtle a thing as human intelligence, we have a recent singular example in Paris, by the eminent physician Charcot, and others, which ill.u.s.trates how great men in special departments walk blindfold over things that afford no mystery to common minds. We allude to certain experiments in hypnotism--the professional name for mesmerism. The medical profession for more than half a century sneered at the discoveries of Mesmer, until now compelled to recognize them, they have not the manliness to acknowledge the fact, but invent a new and inaccurate nomenclature to conceal their change of front. To make a long story short these gentlemen have put a subject under the influence one day, enjoined him to commit a theft or a murder at a given hour the next day, and despite every effort of will on the part of the subject, the crimes have been attempted, and the victim only saved from himself by the interposition of the operator, who was present to remove the influence--or through the understanding of the party against whom the offence was to be committed, in the form of the robbery actually carried out.

"But what does science do with this fact? Nothing but announce it, and then proceed to dig among molecules and their related agitations for the solution of the mystery."

[This is what certain scientists do, but their follies are not chargeable to _Science_, nor to the whole body of Scientists. The ablest thinkers to-day, the deepest inquirers, look to the powers of the soul, and the new anthropology traces these powers to their localities in the brain.--ED. OF JOURNAL.]

"How old is this fact? As old as the race. At one time it was called necromancy, at another witchcraft, at another the inspiration of G.o.d, at a subsequent time animal magnetism, at another called after one of its more modern discoverers,--mesmerism--now hypnotism--which is only another name for magnetic sleep--if anybody knows what that is--or for somnambulism. Common sense tells common people that it is only an abnormal manifestation of the power that gives one person control over another, or enables one person to influence another. The simple every-day habit of exacting a promise from your neighbor to do a certain thing, or for you to make a like promise, and execute it. Sickness is a partial compliance with the conditions of mortality--death being the complete process.

So the hypnotic experiences are the completed ill.u.s.trations of the common power which we call personal influence. That is all.

But that is not mysterious enough for learned people--it is not scientific enough--as everybody can understand it.

"Then, too, it suggests another thing that is fatal to it in the estimation of the teacher--it suggests that what we call the human mind or soul is a potential thing, that acts through the every-day machinery of our bodies, and may be more or less within the grasp of the common mind. There is a higher plane of knowledge than that of mere physical science, and if the theologian mistook its teaching, it is no reason why the pursuit of that knowledge on this higher plane should be ignored. Hence it is that this discovery by Charcot and others, to which we allude, has as yet been barren of fruit, because the methods of science to which the discoverers are wedded forbid the admission of the psychic problem that underlies the remarkable phenomena.

"And just here, it may as well be said first as last,--that the profession to which these eminent men belong, nor any one school of applied science, will ever read the lesson of these experiments, nor will any of the so-called regular schools of learning. The riddle will be read by some thinker outside, and when the bread-and-b.u.t.ter purveyors of theology, science and the schools have become indoctrinated, and prefer to pay their money for the new instead of the old--then these self-const.i.tuted teachers of humanity will all know that the cow was to eat the grindstone--and teach the fact. We simply state a fact, known to history, that the progress of the world is due to the inventor and discoverer, and not to the schools. Every single thing, from the advent of modern astronomy to the electric light, has been from the ranks of the people by discovery or invention, and had to fight its way against the teaching cla.s.s, from time immemorial. The circulation of the blood, which every pig-sticker knew since knives were invented, had to be forced upon medical science by a quack. And now, although the phenomena we refer to have been before the teaching cla.s.s since history records anything, and although Mesmer taught it experimentally eighty years ago, science has now only got so far as to admit the existence of the phenomena.

"Why have not the professions given these things more attention, and why have they in these modern days for three quarters of a century practically denied their existence? That question is a legitimate one. And at the risk of being charged with unfriendliness, it must be said that it was either from an inability to think or from a narrow creedism that will not accept a truth from outside discovery. The effect of this, and what const.i.tutes a crime in the teaching cla.s.s, is, that it has for all these long years shut out this now accepted knowledge from the ma.s.ses of humanity who look to this teaching cla.s.s as authority,--and to use a business form of speech,--pay them for finding and teaching the truth. And so the learning of the world and the common ma.s.s of mind has, after nearly a century, to begin where the ostracised Mesmer left off--a long, dark, weary denial of the truth by the simple refusal to investigate. This is a serious arraignment, but it is admitted to-day by the scientific world to be but the simple truth.

"And what do we find now? Why, these same men who, for more than eighty years, have been denying this truth, now whistle down the wind as fanatics, dreamers and cranks, those who all the time have recognized the truth, and been seeking the law underlying its remarkable phenomena."

[This strictly just arraignment applies to the entire body of the old-fas.h.i.+oned and so-called regular medical and clerical professions, all of whom have been educated into ignorance on these subjects by the colleges, which are the chief criminals in this warfare against science and progress. It was impossible to teach the true science of man in any college but the one of which I was one of the founders and the presiding officer; to obtain the necessary freedom in teaching the highest forms of science, I have been compelled to establish the College of Therapeutics in Boston.--ED. OF JOURNAL.]

And this cla.s.s holds simply that the human being is a living soul, that, for the time being, acts through the organism we call the human body, and that these living beings have an affinity of conditions by which they act and react one upon another, the manifestation of which we call society or social life. That is all there is to this seeming mystery when reduced to simple terms. It is a question that chemistry cannot deal with because a.n.a.lysis is not the method. Molecules, to use a homely phrase, are a good thing, but molecules don't think, and this thing we are considering does think. Molecules are amenable to chemical affinities, and their condition one instant is not and cannot be their condition the next instant. So, if to-day at twelve o'clock the molecules are in combination, chemically, to suggest a theft, they may undergo, and we see do undergo, billions of changes before the hour of meridian arrives to-morrow--and not at all likely at that exact moment to be in the stealing combination again. Or, if so, it is not likely to be for stealing exactly the same article it was combined on the day previous. Yet this infinite series of impossibilities must be possible to have the experiments we refer to come true--on the theory of molecular action. This is one of those absurdities that men call the marvellous discoveries of science. _No crank in Christendom ever conceived anything so utterly absurd._

Common sense comes to our help here, and tells us that this power is from an intelligence that controls molecules, and that this molecular activity is but the motor force which this intelligence uses to execute its purpose; that this purpose is, or may be, continuous, because this intelligence is continuous. And as it is thus paramount, and controlling as to this motor force, which to us is the phenomena of what we call life, it must be thus paramount, be persistent--or in other words, immortal. And it must be immortal because it has been the agent of conception and growth--or antecedent. And if it had the antecedent potency, its potentiality cannot cease when it becomes consequent--or when the machinery which is propelled by this motor force is worn out, or broken, and its use destroyed.

PROGRESS OF DISCOVERY AND IMPROVEMENT.

WONDERFUL INVENTIONS.--Prof. Elisha Gray's new discovery is called _autotelegraphy_, and it is claimed that it will be possible with its use to write upon a sheet of paper and have an autographic facsimile of the writing reproduced by telegraph 300 miles away, and probably a much greater distance.--_Phil. Press._

A Was.h.i.+ngton special in the New York _News_ says: The company owning the _type-setting machine_ has arranged to put up fifty of these machines for the transaction of business. They will be put up at once in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Was.h.i.+ngton, Cincinnati, Chicago and other leading cities. The company claims that the machine is now perfect, and that each machine will perform as much work in setting type as ten average compositors.

EDISON'S PHONOGRAPH.--New York, October 21. Edison gives additional particulars concerning his perfected phonograph. He finished his first phonograph about ten years ago. "That," he says, "was more or less a toy. The germ of something wonderful was perfectly distinct, but I tried the impossible with it, and when the electric light business a.s.sumed commercial importance, I threw everything overboard for that.

Nevertheless, the phonograph has been more or less constantly in mind ever since. When resting from prolonged work upon light, my brain was found to revert almost automatically to the old idea. Since the light has been finished, I have taken up the phonograph, and after eight months of steady work have made it a commercial invention. My phonograph I expect to see in every business office. The first 500 will, I hope, be ready for distribution about the end of January.

Their operation is simplicity itself, and cannot fail. The merchant or clerk who wishes to send a letter has only to set the machine in motion, and to talk in his natural voice, and at the usual rate of speed, into a receiver. When he has finished the sheet, or 'Phonogram,' as I call it, it is ready for putting into a little box made on purpose for mails. We are making sheets in three sizes--one for letters of from 800 to 1,000 words, another size for 2,000 words, and another size for 4,000 words.

"I expect that an agreement may be made with the post-office authorities enabling phonogram boxes to be sent at the same rate as a letter. The receiver of the phonogram will put it into his apparatus and the message will be given out more clearly and distinctly than the best telephone message ever sent. The tones of the voice in the two phonographs which I have finished are so perfectly rendered that one can distinguish between twenty different persons, each one of whom has said a few words. One tremendous advantage is that the letter may be repeated a thousand times. The phonogram does not wear out by use.

Moreover, it may be filed away for a hundred years and be ready for the instant it is needed. If a man dictates his will to a phonograph, there will be no disputing the authenticity of the doc.u.ment with those who knew the tones of his voice in life. The cost of making the phonograph will be scarcely more than the cost of ordinary letter paper. The machine will read out a letter or message at the same speed with which it was dictated."

Edison also has experimented with a device to enable printers to set type directly from the dictation of the phonograph. He claims great precision in repeating orchestral performances, so that the characteristic tones of all the instruments may be distinguished.

_Type-setting Eclipsed_.--A new machine has been invented at Minneapolis which supersedes type-setting. By this machine, which is no larger than a small type-writer and operates on the same plan, a plate or matrix is produced, which is easily stereotyped, thus attaining the same result which is ordinarily reached by preparing a form of type for the foundry which has to be stereotyped and then distributed. The speed of the new machine will be from five to ten times as great as that of type-setting, and if successful it will enable an author to send his work to the stereotyper more easily than he can write it with the pen. When all ambitious would-be authors are let loose upon the world in this manner, what a flood of superfluous literature we shall have and what will become of the superfluous printers?

"_Printing in Colors_ has taken a potent move forward. By the new process a thousand shades can be printed at once. Instead of using engraved rollers or stones, as in the case of colored advertis.e.m.e.nts, the designs or pictures are 'built up' in a case of solid colors specially prepared, somewhat after the style of mosaic work. A portion is then cut or sliced off, about an inch in thickness, and this is wrapped round a cylinder, and the composition has only to be kept moist, and any number of impressions can be printed. This will cause an extraordinary revolution in art work, also in manufactures."

Mr. Edwin F. Field, of Lewiston, Me., has invented a substantial _steam wagon_ for common roads. There is no reason why such wagons should not come into use. When first proposed in England they were put down by jealousy and opposition, but I have always contended that the steam engine should have superseded the horse fifty years ago.

FRUIT PRESERVING.--About Christmas time in 1885 people in San Francisco were astonished to see fresh peaches, pears, and grapes, with all their natural bloom, and looking plump and juicy, on exhibition in the windows of confectionery stores on Kearny and Sutter streets. These fruits attracted great attention, and remained on exhibition several weeks, showing the preservative agent employed, whatever it might be, was singularly powerful in resisting the natural decay. When tasted or smelled of, the fruit showed no peculiarity that could lead to a discovery of the secret of the mysterious process.

It appears now that the invention is at last to be made a practical success on a large scale. The Allegretti Green Fruit Treatment and Storage System Company, with the main storehouse at West Berkeley, announce that they are now ready to store and treat all kinds of green articles, by the week or month, and for s.h.i.+pment East. I. Allegretti, the inventor of this system, stated that he had been experimenting with various processes for preserving green fruit for twenty-six years, and had succeeded in discovering this system, whose success has been demonstrated to the fruit-growers of this State.

The building in use at present is a frame structure, capable of storing some fifty tons of fruit. The inner lining of the walls is galvanized iron. There is no machinery used, and the only thing visible is a large tank, supposed to contain the chemical preparation.

The arrangements are so made as to give an even temperature of 35 degrees.--_Oakland Enquirer._

NAPOLEON'S Ma.n.u.sCRIPT.--"A ma.n.u.script by Napoleon I. has been sold in Paris for five thousand five hundred francs. It was written by Napoleon at Ajaccio in 1790, and the language and orthography are said to be those of an uneducated person. In this ma.n.u.script he speaks with enthusiasm of Robespierre."

PEACE.--Long and impatiently have I waited for the dawning of true civilization and practical religion. It is coming now in the form of an international movement in favor of peace by arbitration. The British deputation which has visited this country to urge the necessity of a treaty for arbitration, was entertained, Nov. 10th, just before their return, by the Commercial Club at the Vendome Hotel, in Boston, and many appropriate remarks were made by the distinguished gentlemen present, including Gov. Ames, and Mayor O'Brien. The deputation consisted of W. R. Cremer, M.P., the most persistent advocate of arbitration, Sir George Campbell, M.P., Andrew Provard, M.P., Halley Stewart, M.P., Benj. Pickard and John Wilson, who represent the workingmen of Great Britain. William Whitman of the Club, who presided at the entertainment, remarked, "It is an inspiring fact, as well as indisputable evidence of social growth, that this appeal for arbitration as a permanent policy has come, not so much from kings, from rulers, or from statesmen, as from workingmen.... It would create an epoch in human history second only in influence to the birth of Christ, and be such a practical exemplification of religion as would awake the conscience and touch the heart of all peoples."

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT is a relic of barbarism which society has not yet outgrown. It tends to cultivate vindictive sentiments, and, at the same time, to generate a morbid sympathy for criminals. The execution of the Chicago Anarchists, as they are called, has had these effects.

They were not properly Anarchists in any philosophic sense, but rather revolutionists, bent on destroying government and the republican rule of the majority by dynamite and a.s.sa.s.sination. Their death gives satisfaction to the vast majority of the people, but their incendiary language has done incalculable mischief, and greatly interfered with all rational and practicable measures of reform, as carried on by the Knights of Labor, co-operative banks and building societies, co-operative a.s.sociations and schools of industrial education for both s.e.xes. Just as we have a prospect of getting rid of international war, this revolutionary communism proposes to introduce a social war that has no definite purpose, but the indulgence of the angry pa.s.sions which have been generated abroad by tyranny and poverty.

ANTARCTIC EXPLORATION.--The Australian colony of Victoria has appropriated $50,000 for two s.h.i.+ps to make a voyage of scientific exploration in the Antarctic circle.

"THE DESERT SHALL BLOSSOM AS THE ROSE."--"The 'Great American Desert'

was long ago found out to be a myth; and now some of the remotest corners which were once supposed to be included in it are proving to offer the largest promises of value for agricultural and grazing purposes. In New Mexico, for example, it has long been thought that certain immense areas must always be comparatively useless because of their natural aridity. But engineers have just completed plans for tapping the Rio Grande with a ca.n.a.l and thus bringing under irrigation a tract some ten miles wide and a hundred and fifty long, containing nearly a million acres. The addition of so vast an area to the arable land of the Territory means, of course, a large increase in the productive resources of that section. Other ca.n.a.ls may possibly do as much. The work of sinking artesian wells is also going on there extensively, while the project of constructing great storage reservoirs, in which the rainfall of the wet season may be collected and from thence gradually distributed through the dry season, is already in serious contemplation by private enterprise. Modern scientific irrigation has already accomplished wonders for the agriculture of Utah; it seems likely to do even more for New Mexico."

LIFE AND DEATH.

122 YEARS.--The great-grandfather of the dramatist Steele Mackaye, named John Morrison, was an old Covenanter and preached in the same parish a hundred years. He lived to be 122. His name, written in the old Bible after he was a centenarian, looks like a copperplate.

154 YEARS.--The Cincinnati _Evening Telegram_ recently published a special from San Antonio, Tex., which says: News has just reached here, from a most reliable source, of the recent death in the State of Vera Cruz, Mex., of Jesus Valdonado, a farmer and ranchman of considerable possessions. This man's age at the time of death was indisputably 154 years. At Valdonado's funeral the pall-bearers were his three sons, aged respectively 140, 120, and 109 years. They were white-haired, but strong and hearty, and in full possession of all their faculties.

AMERICUS, Ga., Sept. 25.--Edmond Montgomery died on Nick Jordan's place, near the county line of Schley, aged 102 years. He was an African chief of the Askari tribe, and was taken to Virginia from Africa in 1807, when he was a young man. He had a large family in Virginia, and when he died he left his third wife and 25 children in Georgia. His grandchildren and great-grandchildren are unknown and unnumbered. He had remarkably good eyesight and health, and never took a dose of medicine in his life.

THIRTY-THREE CHILDREN.--A West Virginian named Brown recently visited Was.h.i.+ngton to furnish evidence in a pension claim. Inquiry showed that his mother had borne thirty-three children in all. Twenty of this number were boys, sixteen of whom had served in the Union army. Two were killed. The others survived. The death of the two boys ent.i.tles the mother to a pension. General Black says the files of the office fail to show another record where the sixteen sons of one father and mother served as soldiers in the late war.

EFFECT OF POVERTY.--"M. Delerme, a distinguished Parisian physician, found that in France the death rate of persons between the ages of forty and forty-five, when in easy circ.u.mstances, was only 8.3 per one thousand per annum, while the poorer cla.s.ses of similar age died at the rate of 18.7. That was two and one-half times as many of the poor as the rich died in France at these ages out of a given number living."