|
BUCHANAN'S JOURNAL OF MAN.
VOL. I. JULY, 1887. NO. 6.
CONTENTS OF JOURNAL OF MAN.
Magnetic Education and Therapeutics—The So-Called Scientific Immortality—Review of the New Education—Victoria's Half Century—Outlook of Diogenes—A Bill to Destroy the Indians MISCELLANEOUS INTELLIGENCE—The Seybert Commission; The Evils that need Attention; Condensed Items—Mesmerism in Paris—Medical Freedom—Victoria's Jubilee; Delightful Homes Outlines of Anthropology Continued—Cranioscopy—Illustrated
MAGNETIC EDUCATION AND THERAPEUTICS.
EXTRACTS FROM AN ESSAY BY DR. CHARLES DU PREL, IN SPHINX, TRANSLATED FOR THE JOURNAL OF MAN.
"In the Wiener Allgemeiner I spoke of the possibility of moral education by means of magnetism, which has been carried out." * * *
"Dr. Bernheim, a Professor of the Medical Faculty in Nancy who is a champion of hypnotism has written a book on 'Suggestion and its Application in Therapeutics,' in which a great many hypnotic cures are recorded."
* * * * *
"Dr. —— quotes Franklin against magnetism but Sprengel in his Pharmacology says 'Franklin, sickly as he was, took no part whatever in the investigation.' The Academy again investigated (1825-31) somnambulism, discovered by Puysegur, Mesmer's scholar. In their report of two year's investigation, eleven M. D.'s unanimously pronounced in favor of all important phenomena ascribed to somnambulism. A fairly complete synopsis of their report will be found in my 'Philosophy of Mystics.'"
* * * * *
"Du Potet first studied medicine, but disgusted by the poor results of Pharmacology he embraced magnetism. He performed a series of mesmeric experiments in the Hotel Dieu of so potent a nature that twenty M. D.'s of that celebrated hospital signed the minutes of these proceedings. People ran after Du Potet, pointing at him and crying 'The man who cures.'"
* * * * *
"The respect for medical therapeutics never has been at as low an ebb as just now. The public cannot be blamed for this lack of respect, for they have daily experiences of the ill results of medicine. Even high medical authorities are of the opinion that we have to-day a disintegration of medical principles worse than ever. More uncertain than therapeutics is the manner of diagnosing to-day! The public is well aware that each doctor has something different to say or prescribe. I have a personal case in point. During eighteen months I consulted seven different doctors, and got seven different contrary diagnoses as well as contradictory modes of treatment, and this, too, in the city of Munich, which is hardly secondary to any other city for its medical talent. Is there any cause to blame the public for running to the magnetizers? I should do so myself if my magnetic susceptibility was greater. In such magnetizers as even Mesmer, Dr. B. can see nothing but charlatans, but I desire to make him aware that a physician whose reputation he is cognizant of, Prof. Nussbaum in Munich, said to his audience in College, 'Gentlemen, magnetism is the medicine of the future.' As I am writing this I have been disturbed by a visitor desiring the address of a reliable magnetizer, as the physician recommended a magnetizer, as he was at his wits end."
"In our medicine the adjunct sciences alone are scientific, and we must respect their high grade; but therapeutics we have none. Hence Mesmer should be called a benefactor to mankind, for he has pointed out the correct way. He, with Hippocrates, says that not the physician but nature cures—that the real therapeutics consists only in aiding the vis medicatrix naturae. In this direction the professors at Nancy and Paris are laboring. They have given the experimental proof that if the idea of an organic change of the body is instilled into the mind of the hypnotized, then such change will take place. In this we have a foundation for a PSYCHIC THERAPEUTICS which we hope will soon put an end to the anarchic condition of medicine of the present day. But the greatest curse to science of old, and which makes its appearance even to-day, is that the old ideas are the greatest enemies of the new."
"Unfortunately it is the same in the thought realm as in lifeless nature, vis inertiae—the law of indolence, according to which nature remains in its condition to all eternity, until she is forced into some new condition from a new cause. This vis inertiae is harder to conquer in the thought realm than in lifeless nature, for Mesmer appeared a hundred years ago, and yet to-day they call him "a perfect charlatan." Braid, thirty years ago, started hypnotism, but only after Hansen made a multitude of experiments for profit and pleasure in the largest cities of Germany, did the physicians wake up to the idea of investigating it. They teach nothing of mesmerism or hypnotism at the universities. Yes, even one year ago a professor of medicine confessed to me, should I pronounce the word somnambulism I'd be ruined. This is the manner in which ideas are kept from medical students."
"If medicine, in its results, could look with pride on its therapeutics, it might be explained. But a therapeutics that allows thousands of children to sink yearly into untimely graves from all manner of diseases, that allows a large proportion of grown persons to be decimated yearly by epidemics, that in its psychiatry is perfectly impotent to stop the rapid increase of insanity, that notoriously cannot cure a migraine, a cold, yea, not even a corn,—such a system ought surely to have some modesty, and be only too glad to accept improvements that tend to ameliorate this condition."
CONDITION OF THE MEDICAL PROFESSION.
These remarks of Dr. Du Prel, though somewhat exaggerated, are probably based on truth in their reference to the backward condition of the medical profession in Europe, and of all that portion in America which is essentially European, and governed by European authority. But the healing art in America has been to a great extent emancipated by the spirit of American liberty, and in its actual results among liberal physicians is far in advance of the European system. One signal proof of this was given at Cincinnati in 1849, when that city was visited by a terrible epidemic of Asiatic cholera, which swept off five thousand of its inhabitants. The mortality of cholera under old school practise had been from twenty-five to sixty per cent., the latter having been realized in hospitals at Paris. Under the practice taught in our college at that time, the mortality in 1,500 cases did not exceed six per cent.
The atmosphere of freedom in this country, and the absolute medical freedom (until within a few years the colleges have procured medical legislation to help their diplomas, and their graduates) have given a progressiveness and practicality to American physicians which are beginning to be recognized abroad.
Dr. Lawson Tait is eminent in the treatment of women in England. In the Medical Current of April 20th, he is quoted as expressing a regret that his time and money had not been directed to the Western instead of the Eastern Hemisphere, when picking up his medical knowledge. He predicted that 'ere long it will be to the medical colleges of America rather than to those of Europe that students will travel.' Then he goes on to say:
"American visitors abroad who have given weeks and months to see me work, have one and all impressed me with their possession of that feature of mind which in England I fear we do not possess, the power of judging any question solely upon its merits, and entirely apart from any prejudice, tradition, or personal bias. No matter how we may struggle against it, tradition rules all we do; we cannot throw off its shackles, and I am bound to plead guilty to this weakness myself, perhaps as fully as any of my countrymen may be compelled to do. I may have thrown off the shackles in some instances, but I know that I am firmly bound in others, and my hope is that my visit to a freer country and a better climate may extend my mental vision."
POWER OF MAGNETISM AND SUGGESTION.
The suggestion of Du Prel as to the hypnotic teaching in France, that an idea impressed on the mind of the hypnotized will be realized in the body is the basis of a great deal of therapeutic philosophy. It is true in practice just to the extent of human impressibility. A cheerful physician or friend, by encouraging words impresses the idea of recovery and thus sometimes produces it. Judicious friends never speak in a discouraging manner to the invalid. The success of mind cure practitioners is based on this principle. They endeavor to impress on the patient's mind the idea of perfect health, but they know too little of the whole subject to know how to place the patient in that passive and receptive condition in which the results are most promptly and certainly produced.
Such methods are limited in their effect in proportion to human impressibility and cannot possibly supersede all use of remedies which reach thousands of cases in which mental operations would be entirely futile. But the power of animal magnetism over all diseases and infirmities of mind and body has been so often demonstrated that its neglect is a deep disgrace to the medical colleges. A correspondent of the Daily Telegraph gives the following illustration of its power over drunkenness:
"About eighteen months ago I was conversing with my friend B., who is an enthusiastic believer in mesmerism, and has repute as an amateur practitioner. My contention was that his favorite science (?) had contributed absolutely nothing to the world's good to cause its recognition by either scientists or philosophers. 'Can you give me,' said I, 'one instance in which you have conferred an actual benefit by the practice of your favorite art?' He related several, from which I selected the following:—'There lives by my parsonage,' said my friend B., 'a man who for many years, had been a confirmed drunkard. Repeatedly were his wife and children forced to flee from him, for when in his drunken frenzies, he attempted to murder them. Again and again have I striven to induce him to flee from his horrible vice, but my efforts were always futile. One day he called to see me when he was suffering acutely from the effects of drink. I resolved to place him under mesmeric influence. This I did, and while subject to me made him promise not to touch strong drink again, and if he attempted to break his pledge, might the drink taste to him filthy as putrid soapsuds. I then restored him to his normal state, and he left me. He kept his unconsciously given promise. In the course of a couple of years this man raised himself from a condition of poverty to the comfortable position of a thriving market gardener. 'Not a fortnight since,' resumed my friend, 'my neighbor's wife laughingly said to me, 'There is no fear of my husband ever drinking again, sir. You know he has to be in the market very early in the morning with his vegetables. Yesterday morning, while he was drinking a cup of coffee at the hotel an old mate said to him, 'Why don't you drink some spirits; are you afraid?' To show his mate that he was not afraid, he ordered a glass of brandy, but no sooner did he put it in his mouth than he spat it out again, saying the 'filthy stuff tasted like rotten soapsuds.' My friend B. said, that, till he told me, to no one had he mentioned the fact, and that what he did to his poor neighbor he did in order to see if it were possible to use mesmerism as a remedial agent in cases of drunkenness."
The power of control over the impressible condition (which is so easily developed into hypnotism) has been recently illustrated in France, and reports of the phenomena published in the London News, concerning which Mr. Charles Dawbarn has published the following in the Banner of Light:
"According to the reports published in the Daily News of London, Eng., an attempt has been made by physicians in Paris, France, to determine the duration of an hypnotic influence. Some of my readers may not be aware that 'hypnotism' is a word coined by the medical faculty to replace the term 'mesmerism,' which they consider disreputably associated with spiritualism. These physicians seem to have had some very fine sensitives upon whom to operate. The first experiment was upon a lady of some means, but having a mother and sister dependent upon her for support. The hypnotizer first established his influence in the usual manner, and then told the lady he wished her to go to a lawyer the next day, and make her will in his favor. She protested, but finally gave way. All memory of this promise seemed to be lost as soon as she returned to her normal condition. But next day she went to a lawyer, and although he begged her to remember her mother and sister, the will was made just as suggested by the physician. She was an affectionate daughter and told the lawyer she was impelled to leave her property to a stranger by an influence which she could not resist.
"A second experiment with another sensitive was then tried. This time the poor girl promised to poison a friend next day, she carried away with her a dose prepared by the doctor. Not knowing why, and like the other sensitive, under an influence she could not resist, she gave her friend the harmless drug in a glass of milk, and thus enacted the part of a murderer.
"These experiments have the novelty of having been made by the regular faculty; but thousands of Spiritualists have proved the truth of an hypnotic influence lasting long after the apparent release of the sensitive. We know, or ought to know, that the hypnotic condition can be induced without visible passes; and many of us have seen a sensitive under influence sitting quietly, showing no sign of her slavery to the will of another. We may go yet a step further and assert that men and women, visible and invisible, are constantly psychologizing each other, although we only use the term "sensitive" when the effect is visible to our dull senses.
"But Spiritualists as a whole have been converted by the phenomena appealing to their outward senses, and know little and care little for effects that can only be traced by shrewd, careful and scientific experiment. Yet such facts as come to the surface in those experiments with sensitives in France, are keys with which to unlock some of life's darkest mysteries, and expose the harsh treatment of many mediums.
"Many of us have been greatly troubled by the conduct of our mediums, and often puzzled by their careful prepared attempts at fraud. Mediums we have met and loved, because they have given us proof after proof of the 'gates ajar' for angel visitors, have been presently detected in frauds that required days of careful preparation. We have cried, 'Down with the frauds!' and insisted that they should return to wash-tub and spade for an honest living.
"We have omitted to keep in view that one who is a medium Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays must also be a medium Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, and we have neglected to learn the lessons of our own experience. I was talking recently to a gentleman of prominence, twice sheriff of his county, who was narrating with glee how he had mesmerised a young man, and then told him, 'At noon to-morrow you will be lame, and it will last two hours.' Of course it happened much to the poor fellows perplexity, but my friend would have been surprised to discover that therein was the entire case of the French sensitives and of our poor mediums.
"A very important thought is that an hypnotic influence need not spring from any verbal expression. We all carry with us an influence which strikes every sensitive we meet; and if we sit with her when she is, of course, specially passive, she must receive a yet more marked influence. There is a photographic curiosity now often exhibited which, I think, illustrates the thought I want to emphasize. A family or a class can be photographed, one by one, at exactly the same focus and on the same negative, with a result that you have a clear and distinct face, not of any one's personality, but that actually combines the features of the whole into a new individual unlike any of the sitters."
"This is the very influence we cast upon a sensitive when she sits for us in a miscellaneous circle. We cannot say that any one of us has powerfully affected her, but we know the entire influence has got control and possession, and that influence follows her, too often with irresistible power."
The publication of a work on animal magnetism by Binet and Fere of Paris prompts the following sketch of the subject by the Boston Herald, a newspaper which pays great attention to anything foreign or anything from the old school profession, but ignores that which is American and original. The reader will observe that the writers are all in the dark, unable to explain the phenomena they describe.
PROGRESS OF MAGNETISM.
One of the most notable features of the scientific tendencies of the present day is the extraordinary interest taken in the investigation of those peculiar physical and psychical conditions attending the states now known collectively under the name of hypnotism, varying from lethargy, catalepsy, etc., to somnambulism. Until quite recently these investigations have been frowned upon and tabooed in scientific circles, and the fact that any man of scientific inclinations was known to feel an interest in matters associated with "mesmerism" or "animal magnetism" was sufficient to make him an object of suspicion, and injure his good standing amongst his fellow-scientists. The result of the so-called investigations long ago instituted by the French Academy, pronouncing in effect the whole subject a humbug and delusion, has lain like an interdict upon further researches, and the whole matter was left over, for the most part, to charlatans or to persons hardly capable of forming sound judgments or proceeding according to the accurate methods demanded by modern science. Science, however, in the remarkable progress attained of late, has advanced so far upon certain lines that it has been hardly possible to proceed further in those directions without entering upon the forbidden field. Therefore, the old signboards against trespassing have been taken down. For "mesmerism," that verbal scarecrow, has been substituted "hypnotism," which word has had a wonderfully legitimatizing effect; while "animal magnetism," that once flouted idea, has been proven to be an existent fact by methods as accurate as those adopted by Faraday or Edison to verify their observations.
EFFORTS OF SCIENTISTS.
Many of the most eminent scientists of Europe are now devoting themselves assiduously to these researches. Periodicals making a specialty of the subject are now published in France, Germany, and England. A catalogue of the recent literature of hypnotism and related phenomena, compiled by Max Dessoir, was printed in the number of the German magazine called the Sphinx for February of this year, and this catalogue occupied nine pages. The list is limited to those works written on the lines laid under the methods of the modern school, all books being excluded whose authors hold to "mesmeric" theories, or who are even professional magnetizers. The catalogue is, therefore, as strictly scientific as possible, and, being classified with German thoroughness under the different branches of the subject, such as "hystero-hypnotism," "suggestion," "fascination," etc., it will prove a valuable assistance to the student.
In this country the interest of scientists has not yet been aroused to an extent comparable with that of European investigators. Old prejudices have not entirely lost their potency. One of the most eminent professors of a leading university is said to have been subjected to ridicule from his colleagues because of a marked interest shown in the subject, and a Boston physician of high standing within a few months confided to the writer that he had made use of hypnotic methods, with gratifying success, in the case of a patient where ordinary remedies had proven unavailing, but he did not venture to make the results public, since his fellow doctors might be inclined to condemn his action as "irregular."
A work embracing the whole subject has lately appeared in Paris, and, as it is to form a volume of the valuable International Scientific series, published in English, French, German, and Italian, it can hardly fail to diffuse a correct popular understanding of the results thus far attained. The book is called "Le Magnetism Animal" (Animal Magnetism), and its authors are Messrs. Alfred Binet and Charles Fere of the medical staff of the Salpetriere Hospital for Nervous Disorders in Paris. It gives a history of the patient researches conducted at that institution by the medical staff under the celebrated Prof. Charcot during the past nine years. These experiments have been prosecuted according to the most exact scientific methods, and with the most extreme caution. The endeavor has been to obtain, first of all, the most elementary psychic phenomena, and to test every step in the investigations by separate experiment, specially devised to prove the good faith of the subject and the reality of his hallucination, to eliminate the possibility of unconscious suggestion, to establish relations with similar phenomena of disease or health in the domain of physiology and psychology, and to note the modifications which can be brought about by altering the conditions of the experiments. The authors possess the great scientific virtue of never dogmatising. In the entire book not a single law is laid down, not a single hypothesis is advanced, which is not reached by the most approved inductive processes. A great service of the book lies in its enunciation of new and trustworthy methods for studying the physiology of the brain in health and disease, while it brings into the realm of physical experiment vexed questions of psychology heretofore given over to metaphysical methods exclusively.
THE HYPNOTIC SLEEP
Is described as a different form of natural sleep, and all the causes which bring on fatigue are capable of bringing on hypnotism in suitable subjects. Two of the leading hypnotic states are lethargy and catalepsy, the former being analogous to deep sleep, and the latter to a light slumber. In lethargy the respiratory movements are slow and deep; in catalepsy slight, shallow, very slow, and separated by a long interval. In lethargy the application of a magnet over the region of the stomach causes profound modifications in the breathing and circulation, while there is no such effect in catalepsy. This shows the connection of hypnotism with magnetism, and various other experiments with magnets have produced some remarkable results. Here it may be added that Dr. Gessmann, a Vienna scientist who has made a specialty of hypnotic studies, has invented and successfully applied an instrument called a hypnoscope, consisting of an arrangement of magnets for the purpose of ascertaining whether any person is a good hypnotic subject.
The experiments demonstrate that sensation in the hypnotic states varies between the two opposite poles of hyperaesthesia and anaeesthesia; in other words, the senses may be extraordinarily exalted, as in somnambulism, or, as in lethargy, they may be extinct, except sometimes hearing. In somnambulism the field of vision and acuteness of sight are about doubled, hearing is made very acute, and smell is so intensely developed that a subject can find by scent the fragment of a card, previously given him to feel, and then torn up and hidden. The memory in somnambulism is similarly exalted. When awakened the subject does not, as a rule, remember anything that occurred while he was entranced, but, when again hypnotized, his memory includes all the facts of his sleep, his life when awake and his former sleeps. Richet attests how somnambules recall with a luxury of detail scenes in which they have taken part and places they have visited long ago. M——, one of his somnambules, sings the air of the second act of the opera "L'Africaine" when she is asleep, but can not remember a note of it when awake.
There is a theory that no experience whatever of any person is lost to the memory; it is only the power to recall it that is defective. The authors of this work say that, while the exaltation of the memory during somnambulism does not give absolute proof to the theory that nothing is lost, it proves at any rate that the memory of preservation is much greater than is generally imagined, in comparison with the memory of reproduction, or recollection. "It is evident," they say, "that in a great number of cases, where we believe the memory is completely blotted out, it is nothing of the kind. The trace is always there, but what is lacking is the power to evoke it; and it is highly probable that if we were subjected to hypnotism, or the action of suitable excitants, memories to all appearance dead might be revived."
A comparison between the phenomena of awakening from natural and artificial sleep is instituted. In the case of dreams, recollection more or less vivid persists for a few seconds, then becomes effaced. This forgetfulness is even more marked in the case of hypnosis. On returning to natural consciousness, the subject cannot recompose a single one of the scenes in which he has played his part as witness or actor. The loss, however, is not complete, for often a word or two is sufficient to bring back a whole scene, though this word or two coming from operator to subject, partakes more or less of the nature of a suggestion.
SUGGESTION.
"Suggestion," by which is meant the production of thoughts and actions on the part of the subject through some indication or hint given by the operator, is found to be analogous to dreaming. Say the authors: "For suggestion to succeed, the subject must have naturally fallen, or been artificially thrown into a state of morbid receptivity: but it is difficult to determine accurately the conditions of suggestionability. However, we may mention two. The first, the mental inertia of the subject: * * * the consciousness is completely empty: an idea is suggested, and reigns supreme over the slumbering consciousness, * * * The second is psychic hyperexcitability, the cause of the aptitude for suggestion." "For example, we say to a patient: 'Look, you have a bird in your apron,' and no sooner are these simple words pronounced than she sees the bird, feels it with her fingers, and sometimes even hears it sing." "Again, in place of speech we engage the attention of the patient, and when her gaze has become settled and obediently follows all our movements, we imitate with the hand the motion of an object which flies. Soon the subject cries: 'Oh, what a pretty bird!' How has a simple gesture produced so singular an effect?"
"It is admitted, however, that the hypothesis of the association of ideas only partly covers the facts of suggestion, even when stretched to include resemblances. For instance, when we charge the brain of an entranced patient with some strange idea, such as, 'On awakening you will rob Mr. So-and-so of his handkerchief,' and on awakening, the patient accomplishes the theft commanded, can we believe that in such a sequence there is nothing more than an image associated with an act? In point of fact, the patient has appropriated and assimilated the idea of the experimenter. She does not passively execute a strange order, but the order has passed in her consciousness from passive to active. We can go so far as to say that the patient has the will to steal. This state is complex and obscure, hitherto no one has explained it. * * * The facts of paralysis by suggestion completely upset classical psychology. The experimenter who produces them so easily knows neither what he produces nor how he does it. Take the example of a systematic anaesthesia (paralysis of sensation). We say to the subject, 'On awakening you will not see Mr. X., who is there before us; he will have completely disappeared.' No sooner said than done; the patient on awakening sees every one around her except Mr. X. When he speaks she does not answer his questions; if he places his hand on her shoulder she does not feel the contact; if he gets in her way, she walks straight on, and is terrified at being stopped by an invisible obstacle. * * * Here the laws of association, which do such good service in solving psychological problems, abandon us completely. Apparently they do not account for all the facts of consciousness."
PORTRAITS BY HALLUCINATION.
A remarkable and suggestive series of experiments performed with portraits by hallucination is given in the book. These experiments show, that if by suggestion a subject is made to see a portrait on a sheet of card board which is exactly alike on both sides, the image will always be seen on the same side, and, however it is presented, the subject will always place the card with the surfaces and edges in the exact positions they occupied at the moment of suggestion, in such a manner that the image can neither be reversed nor inclined. If the surfaces are reversed, the image is no longer seen; if the edges, it is seen upside down. The subject is never caught in a mistake; the changes may be made out of his sight, but the image is invariably seen in accordance with the primitive conditions, although absolutely no difference is to be detected by the normal vision between the two blank surfaces.
One experiment brings out this fact clearly. On a white sheet of paper is placed a card equally white; with a fine point, but without touching the paper, the contour of the card is followed while the idea of a line traced in black is suggested to the subject. The subject, when awakened, is asked to fold the paper according to these imaginary lines. He holds the paper at the distance at which it was at the moment of suggestion, and folds it in the form of a rectangle exactly superposable on the card.
A curious experiment in the same line has been often repeated by Prof. Charcot. The subject is given the suggestion of a portrait on a white card, which is then shuffled up with a dozen cards all alike. On awakening, the subject is asked to run over the collection, without being told the reason why it is wished. When he comes to the card on which had been located the imaginary portrait, he at once perceives it. One detail of these experiments is very significant. Supposing we show the imaginary portrait at a distance of two yards from the subject's eyes, the card appears white, whereas a real photograph would appear gray. If it is gradually brought nearer, the imaginary portrait at last appears, but it is necessary for it to be much nearer than an ordinary photograph for the patient to recognize the subject. By means of opera glasses we can make the patient recognize her hallucination at a distance at which she could not perceive it with the naked eye. In short, the imaginary object which figures in the hallucination is perceived under the same conditions as if it were real. Various other experiments are detailed in support of this formula. The opera glasses only act as if they were focussed upon the point of hallucination, and in the case of a short-sighted subject they had to be altered to allow for the defect of vision. If the patient looks through a prism the image is seen duplicated, although the subject is absolutely ignorant of the properties of a prism, as well as of the fact that the glass is a prism. A photograph of the plain white card used when the photograph was suggested may be substituted, and on being shown to the patient, the hallucinatory image is seen just the same, even two years after the original experiment, as was done in one case.
Some strange phenomena of polarity are related. The following experiments by MM. Binet and Fere are given in illustration: "We give a patient in somnambulism the common hallucination of a bird poised on her finger. While she is caressing the imaginary bird she is awakened and a magnet is brought near her head. After a few minutes she stops short, raises her eyes and looks about in astonishment. The bird which was on her finger has disappeared. She looks all over the ward and at last finds it, for we hear her say, 'So you thought you would leave me, little bird.' After a few minutes the bird again disappears anew, but almost immediately reappears. The patient complains from time to time of a pain in the head at a point corresponding to what has been described in this book as the visual centre (some distance above and slightly posterior to the ear)." The magnet also has the same effect in suspending the real perception. One of the patients was shown a Chinese gong and striker, and took fright on sight of the instrument. When a blow was struck she instantly fell into catalepsy. She was reawakened, and asked to look attentively at the gong; meanwhile, without her knowledge, a small magnet was brought near her head. After a minute the instrument had completely disappeared from her sight. When it was struck with redoubled force, she only looked from side to side with an air of slight astonishment.
* * * * *
The mysteries which puzzle these writers are made plain by anthropology, and I have been presenting the explanation for over forty years to my pupils. The sensibility to hypnotic phenomena is due to the anterior portion of the middle lobe of the brain—to the portion which is developed one inch behind the external angle of the eye, by exciting which we bring on the somnolent condition. The predominance of this region renders the person liable to the mesmeric phenomena.
The hypnoscope proposed is quite unnecessary. The proper test of magnetic susceptibility is either to excite the organ of somnolence and observe if the eyes are disposed to close, or to pass your fingers over the outstretched hand of the subject, within one or two inches, and observe if he feels any impression. A distinct feeling of coolness is sufficient proof of magnetic susceptibility.
Let those who wish to investigate the subject begin in accordance with true science by testing the sensitiveness of the hand. If sensitive, let the subject sit in a passive state, while you touch the somnolent region on the temples, one inch horizontally behind the brow. In from one to ten minutes the eyes will show a disposition to close, winking repeatedly until a dreamy condition arises, with a tendency to a conscious sleep. In this condition the susceptibility is extreme. Experiments in psychometry may be tried with success; the organs of the brain may be excited, and many interesting experiments may be made by those who understand the brain, for intellectual purposes, or for the promotion of health and cure of diseases.
The whole subject is thoroughly explained in the College of Therapeutics, making thereby a perfect guidance to health, and to progress in philosophy, and supplying the great lack in all systems of education—self-knowledge and the sublime art of health, longevity, and progress in Divine wisdom.
THE SO-CALLED SCIENTIFIC IMMORTALITY.
The Smithsonian Institution at Washington was founded for the increase and diffusion of knowledge. Guided by the contracted notions prevalent among scientists, it has not accomplished much for either object. The theory of Lester F. Ward of this institution was paraphrased as follows in the last JOURNAL:
As for immortal life I must confess, Science has never, never answered "yes." Indeed all psycho-physiological sciences show, If we'd be loyal, we must answer "no!" Man cannot recollect before being born, And hence his future life must be "in a horn." There must be a parte ante if there's a parte post, And logic thus demolishes every future ghost. Upon this subject the voice of science Has ne'er been aught but stern defiance. Mythology and magic belong to "limbus fatuorum;" If fools believe them, we scientists deplore 'em. But, nevertheless, the immortal can't be lost, For every atom has its bright, eternal ghost!
Mr. Ward appears to enjoy greatly this theory of his own final extinction, and he exclaims with infinite self-satisfaction, "this pure and ennobling sense of truth he would scorn to barter for the selfish and illusory hope of an eternity of personal existence." This is quite a jolly funeral indeed!
It is true Mr. Ward's very profound theories contradict an immense number of facts observed by wiser men than himself, but so much the worse for the facts,—they must not embarrass a Smithsonian philosopher when he solves to his own satisfaction the vast problem of the universe. This Mr. Ward thinks he has done. It is quite an ingenious and laboriously constructed hypothesis, but like all other attempts to construct a grand philosophy without a basis of fact, it is hard to manufacture the theory and hard to comprehend it. Mr. Ward says himself in the Open Court that even to comprehend his doctrine would require the "careful reading of nearly 200 pages," while "to see the matter in precisely the same light as I see it would require the reading of the entire work of some 1400 pages!" Really, Mr. Ward, the writer who cannot sufficiently befuddle himself and his readers in fifty pages is not very skilful.
Nevertheless the Ward theory is one of the best that has ever been gotten up by the champions of nescience, and is worthy of a statement in the Journal as quite an improvement on the common expression of materialistic stolidity. He claims that he does not deny immortality, but he recognizes no immortality of man—no human soul. He recognizes only the immortality of the world, such as it is, which nobody denies. The future life of man he considers nothing but an illusion, though there is an immortality of intelligence here in successive forms.
The doctrine, is that spirit, intelligence, or consciousness is a part of matter—that every atom has its own little share, which practically amounts to nothing in its infinite subdivision, but when matter comes into organized forms the spiritual powers thus aggregated and organized become an efficient spiritual energy; and the higher the organism the grander the power that is developed, man being the most perfect organization evolves the grandest spiritual power, as a superior violin evolves finer music than a tambourine. But the intelligence and will of man are only phenomena, like the music, and have no existence beyond that of the organism that produces them. This is substantially the theory of materialists generally, and of the old school medical colleges which consider human life a mere product of human tissues in combination—a doctrine conclusively refuted in "Therapeutic Sarcognomy."
The special merit of the Ward theory lies in the supposition that mind and matter are elements everywhere inseparably united, and that human intelligence is developed by the aggregation and organization of the mind powers that reside in the atoms of matter,—an explanation which does not often occur to the exponents of materialism,—and has the merit of ingenuity. The theory would do very well if it were not demonstrable that life exists only from influx, and that human life and personality survive the body, and become known to every highly organized sensitive, who knows how to investigate such matters.
The Ward theory demolishes the Deity with the greatest ease, and places man, fleeting or evanescent as he is, at the summit of the universe! As he expresses it, "The only intelligence in the universe worthy of the name is the intelligence of the organized beings which have been evolved; and the highest manifestations of the psychic power known to the occupants of this planet is that which emanates from the human brain. Thus does science invert the pantheistic pyramid."
Such is the fog that emanates from the institution that should help the advance and diffusion of knowledge. No God! no soul! not even the awful power that Spencer blindly acknowledges—nothing but matter bubbling up and organizing itself into temporary forms that decay and are gone forever. We may well reciprocate his suggestion, and say that such doctrines belong to the limbus fatuorum, and, if enjoyed as Mr. Ward enjoys them, they may well be called the "fool's paradise." I think Hegel has some similar notion—that God becomes conscious only in man, unconscious everywhere else! And even so brilliant a writer as M. Renan says, "For myself I think that there is not in the universe any intelligence superior to that of man." In reading such expressions we are strongly reminded of the poem on the "rationalistic chicken," which would not admit that it ever came out of an egg. When the wisdom shown in the universe is so immensely beyond the comprehension of man, how can he assume his own to be the highest wisdom?
To such dreary absurdities as this the Open Court newspaper at Chicago is devoted, and it has a bevy of well-educated friends and supporters—well-educated as the world goes,—and graced with literary capacity and culture, but educated into blindness and ignorance of the scientific phenomena of psychic science,—unwilling to investigate or incapable of candid investigation. The coterie sustaining such a newspaper are precisely in the position of the contemporaries of Galileo, who refused to look through his telescope or study his demonstrations.
It is not from any scientific spirit or scientific acumen that this materialistic coterie avoid psychometric and spiritual facts. The newspapers which ignore or sneer at such knowledge are easily gulled in matters of science. A writer in the Open Court upon the possibilities of the future, which he presents as being confined "strictly to legitimate deductions from present knowledge," exhibits an amount and variety of ignorant credulity which ought not to have gained admission to an intelligent journal. He speaks of an unlimited freedom of submarine navigation and navigation of the air which would not have appeared possible to any but the most superficial sciolist. He also speaks of an electroscope that will telegraph rays of light (!) and enable us thereby to see our most distant friends, and of stowing in a small compass electricity enough to exterminate an army. This imaginative ignoramus adds, "Give to our present biped acquaintance the ability to exterminate armies with a lightning flash, added to the power of sailing at will through the air or of passing at will and in safety beneath the ocean waves, and he would depopulate the earth." The writer gives much more of this Munchausen stuff which is not worthy of notice except as an illustration of the feeble scientific intelligence with which many newspapers are edited. The editor of a really scientific journal referred to this article in the Open Court "as a proof of the danger of a little knowledge."[1]
[1] The air is certainly yet to be navigated when a sufficient amount of power can be concentrated in the machine, but at present we can do little more than float with the wind. It is probable that an engine sufficiently strong, built of the best steel, and propelled by the explosive power of gun cotton, or some similar explosive, would overcome the difficulty. If I were to construct such an engine I would substitute for the lifting power of a balloon that of a sail acting as a kite.
REVIEW OF THE NEW EDUCATION.
BY SAMUEL EADON, M.A., M.D., PH.D., F.S.A., ETC.
I have read very carefully the third edition of the "New Education," and feel impelled, in order to satisfy my conscientiousness, to write a short article relative to the impressions which the reading of the book produced in my mind.
It is a work of extraordinary merit. Like George Combe's "Constitution of Man," it is highly suggestive; the fascination of the author was such that I could not help but write. To know its value and appreciate its lofty moral outpourings, people must buy the book and read for themselves. The first thought would be that it is the production of an original thinker who had the courage to utter opinions fearless of results, however antagonistic to the common-herd notions.
In all ages, the human understanding, the reasoning faculties, have ever been considered to hold the supremacy in the scale of development, of culture, and of advance toward a higher form of civilization; the moral faculties were thought next in order, and then the propensities common to all animal natures held the third or inferior position. This view of human nature has been handed down from an elder antiquity and still retains its hold largely in the universities and great public schools of the present day.
If this view of the nature of man be a correct one, there ought to be a vast intellectual brotherhood of mankind; but it is not so. From the days of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, this culture of the intellectual power has been continuously pursued, but with very slender results; for were this kind of education pursued for 100,000 years, the morale of society would be little better than it is at the present time.
Dr. Buchanan takes quite a different view and makes the moral or ethical faculties supreme, in development and culture, the intellect being the instruments for acquiring facts and the propensities the steam to bring about the desired results. According to his views of man, our emotional faculties are of a higher or more God-like order than our intellectual powers. The intellect being the hand-maid to the emotions, to feel the force of truth is higher in mental excellence than to perceive it. Depth of emotions is the climax of spiritual power.
The ethical and aesthetic being the foundation of the New Education, Dr. Buchanan, in a series of beautifully written chapters, enters into details in reference to what teachers should be, what the subjects taught ought to be, and what are the shells and what the kernels of knowledge. He shows clearly that woman will ultimately be the regenerator of humanity, that education so far has been merely fractional and one-sided—that true development consists in the co-education of soul and body, the co-education of man and woman, the co-education of the material and spiritual worlds.
There are a million of teachers, and every one should have a copy of this work. No man is fit to teach in the high sense advocated by this author unless he has thoroughly mastered this work. It is easy to pull down a system, but not so easy to build it up; but in the New Education the follies of the old educational systems are not only levelled to the dust, but a higher and more practical, industrious, and crime-preventing system of training and teaching takes its place. This book will become the grand educational Bible for teachers in all countries where the English language is spoken.
Nor should it be in the hands of teachers only. Every intelligent father and mother, anxious for the development of their sons and daughters should study this book night and day. It should be translated into every European language, and also into Chinese and other Eastern tongues; the refined, aesthetic, and knowledge-loving people of Japan, were the work translated into their language, would enjoy it intensely.
HAMBROOK COURT, near Bristol, England.
* * * * *
A Japanese scholar has already undertaken the translation of the "New Education" in Japan. The JOURNAL has not room at present for the essays of correspondents, and I have only given a small portion of the essay of the learned Dr. Eadon, who is the most progressive member of the medical profession in England.
VICTORIA'S HALF CENTURY
We are nearing the fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of Queen Victoria's reign. A London writer, reviewing the changes which have taken place in the period marks these notable points: A strange country was England in those far-off days; there was but little difference between the general state of society under William and the general state of society under George II. If we compared the courts of George IV. and William with the company of a low tap-room, we should not flatter the tap-room. Broad-blown coarseness, rank debauchery, reckless prodigality, were seen at their worst in the abode of English monarchs. A decent woman was out of place amid the stupid horrors of the Pavilion or of Windsor; and we do not wonder at the sedulous care which the Queen's guardians employed to keep her beyond reach of the prevailing corruption. A man like the Duke of Cumberland would not now be permitted to show his face in public save in the dock; but in those times his peculiar habits were regarded as quite royal and quite natural. Jockeys, blacklegs, gamblers, prize-fighters were esteemed as the natural companions of princes; and when England's king drove up to the verge of a prize-ring in the company of a burly rough who was about to exchange buffets with another rough, the proceeding was considered as quite manly and orthodox. Imagine the Prince of Wales driving in the park with a champion boxer!
A strange country indeed was England in those times; and to look through the newspapers and memoirs of fifty years ago is an amusement at once instructive and humiliating. The king dines with the premier duke, makes him drunk, and has him carefully driven round the streets, so that the public may see what an intoxicated nobleman is like. The same king pushes a statesman into a pond, and screams with laughter as the drenched victim crawls out. Morning after morning the chief man of the realm visits the boxing-saloon, and learns to batter the faces and ribs of other noble gentlemen. We hear of visits paid by royalty to an obscure Holborn tavern, where, after noisy suppers, the fighting-men were wont to roar their hurricane choruses and talk with many blasphemies of by-gone combats. Think of that succession of ugly and foul sports compared with the peace, the refinement, the gentle and subdued manners of Victoria's court, and we see how far England has travelled since 1837.
Fifty years ago our myriads of kinsmen across the seas were strangers to us, and the amazing friendship which has sprung up between the subjects of Victoria and the citizens of the vast republic was represented fifty years ago by a kind of sheepish, good-humored ignorance, tempered by jealousy. The smart packets left London and Liverpool to thrash their way across the Atlantic swell, and they were lucky if they managed to complete the voyage in a month—Charles Dickens sailed in a vessel which took twenty-two days for the trip, and she was a steamer, no less! For all practical purposes England and America are now one country. The trifling distance of 3,000 miles across the Atlantic seems hardly worth counting, according to our modern notions; and the American gentleman talks quite easily and naturally about running over to London or Paris to see a series of dramatic performances or an exhibition of pictures. When Victoria began to reign the English people mostly regarded America as a dim region, and the voyage thither was a fearsome understanding.
There is something in the catalogue of mechanical devices which almost affects the mind with fatigue. Fifty years ago the ordinary citizen picked up his ideas of all that was going on in the world from a sorely-taxed news-sheet; and a very blurred idea he managed to get at the best. Poor folk had to do without the luxury of the news, and they were as much circumscribed mentally as though they had been cattle; we remember a village where even in 1852 the common people did not know who the Duke of Wellington was. No such thing as a newspaper had been seen there within the memory of man; only one or two of the natives had seen a railway engine, and nobody in the whole village row had been known to visit a town. But now-a-days the villager has his high-class news-sheet; and he is very much discontented indeed if he does not see the latest intelligence from America, India, Australia, China—everywhere. An American statesman's conversation of Monday afternoon is reported accurately in the London journals on Tuesday morning; a speech of Mr. Gladstone's delivered at midnight on one day is summarized in New York and San Francisco the next day; the result of a race run at Epsom is known in Bombay within forty minutes. We use no paradox when we say that every man in the civilized world now lives next door to everybody else; oceans are merely convenient pathways, howling deserts are merely handy places for planting telegraph poles and for swinging wires along which thoughts travel between country and country with the velocity of lightning. We see that the world with its swarming populations is growing more and more like some great organism whereof the nerve-centres are subtly, delicately connected by sensitive nerve-tissues. Even now, using a lady's thimble, two pieces of metal, and a little acid, we can speak to a friend across the Atlantic gulf, and before ten years are over, a gentleman in London will doubtless be able to sit in his office and hear the actual tones of some speaker in New York.
So much has the magic half century brought about.
If we think of the scientific knowledge possessed by the most intelligent men when the Queen ascended the throne, we can hardly refrain from smiling, for it seems as though we were studying the mental endowment of a race of children. The science of electricity was in its infancy; the laws of force were misunderstood; men did not know what heat really was. They knew next to nothing of the history of the globe, and they accounted for the existence of varying species of plants and animals by means of the most infantine hypotheses. A complete revolution—vital and all-embracing—has altered our modes of thought, so that the man of 1887 can scarcely bring himself to conceive the state of mind which contented the man of 1837. We have dark doubts now, perplexing misgivings, weary uncertainties, painful consciousness of limited powers; but along with these weaknesses we have our share of certainties. Are we happier? Nay, not in mind. A quiet melancholy marks the words of all the men who have thought most deeply and learned most. The wise no longer cry out or complain—they accept life and fate with calm sadness, and perhaps with prayerful resignation. We have learned to know how little we can know, and we see with composure that even the miracles already achieved by the restless mind of man are as nothing.
* * * * *
There is a far better reason than this for the sadness of thinking men. It is that, with all the progress of science, art, and education, poverty, misery, disease, and crime still afflict society as they did in ruder ages, and our progress is onward, but not upward. It is upward progress to which the JOURNAL OF MAN is devoted.
In the foregoing sketch very little is said of the real progress of the age—the increase of education, the uprising of the people into greater political power and liberty, the prostration of the power of the church, which is destined to disestablishment, and the uprising of spiritual science.
What is there in the reign of Victoria to be celebrated? Was there ever a more perfect specimen of barely respectable commonplace than the reign of Victoria? What generous impulse, or what notable wisdom has she ever shown? What has she done for the relief of Ireland, for the improvement of a society full of pauperism, crime and suffering, or for the prevention of unjust foreign wars? When has she ever given even a respectable gift to any good object from her enormous income? But virtue is not expected in sovereigns; they are expected only to enjoy themselves hugely, to make an ostentatious display, and consume all their benighted subjects give them.
Mrs. Stanton says:—"The two great questions now agitating Great Britain are 'Coercion for Ireland,' and the 'Queen's Jubilee,' a tragedy and a comedy in the same hour."
Speaking of the Queen's Jubilee she says:
"In this supreme moment of the nation's political crisis, the Queen and her suite are junketing around in their royal yachts on the coast of France, while proposing to celebrate her year of Jubilee by levying new taxes on her people, in the form of penny and pound contributions to build a monument to Prince Albert. The year of Jubilee! While under the eyes of the Queen her Irish subjects are being evicted from their holdings at the point of the bayonet; their cottages burned to the ground; aged and helpless men and women and newborn children, alike left crouching on the highways, under bridges, hayricks and hedges, crowded into poorhouses, jails and prisons, to expiate their crimes growing out of poverty on the one hand and patriotism on the other.
"A far more fitting way to celebrate the year of Jubilee would be for the Queen to scatter the millions hoarded in her private vaults among her needy subjects, to mitigate, in some measure, the miseries they have endured from generation to generation; to inaugurate some grand improvement in her system of education; to extend still further the civil and political rights of her people; to suggest, perchance, an Inviolable Homestead Bill for Ireland, and to open the prison doors to her noble priests and patriots.
"But instead of such worthy ambitions in the fiftieth year of her reign, what does the Queen propose? With her knowledge and consent, committees of ladies are formed in every county, town and village in all the colonies under her flag, to solicit these penny and pound contributions, to be placed at her disposal.
"Ladies go from house to house, not only to the residences of the rich, but to the cottages of the poor, through all the marts of trade, the fields, the factories, begging pennies for the Queen from servants and day-laborers."
These forced collections are not entirely for the benefit of the Queen, but are to be appropriated also to a vast variety of local objects and institutions.
THE OUTLOOK OF DIOGENES.
The ancient philosopher Diogenes, whom even the presence of Alexander could not overawe, is one of the most marked and heroic figures of ancient history. It is said "The Athenians admired his contempt for comfort, and allowed him a wide latitude of comment and rebuke. Practical good was the chief aim of his philosophy; for literature and the fine arts he did not conceal his disdain. He laughed at men of letters for reading the sufferings of Ulysses while neglecting their own; at musicians who spent in stringing their lyres the time which would have been much better employed in making their own discordant natures harmonious; at savants for gazing at the heavenly bodies while sublimely incognizant of earthly ones; at orators who studied how to enforce truth, but not how to practice it. * * * When asked what business he was proficient in, he answered, 'to command men.'"
Psychometry brings up these ancient characters as vividly and truthfully as history. Such psychometric descriptions are a continual miracle. How the psychometers, knowing not of whom they are speaking, guided only by a mysterious intuition, should speak of the most ancient characters as familiarly and truly as of our acquaintances to-day, will ever stand as a psychic miracle, to illustrate the Divine Wisdom that established such a power in man. This is the daily experience of Mrs. Buchanan. Her description of Diogenes was as follows:
"I think this is an ancient. There is something quaint about him. He does not seem to follow anything or anybody. He lived a natural life, indifferent to current teachings. He had peculiar original ideas of his own as to life and its purposes, and seems to be a man of philanthropic nature, not aesthetic, but very indifferent as to personal appearance and habits, or as to pleasing people, not at all fastidious. He did not mind people's opinions in the least. They never disturbed him.
"He had enough combativeness to fight his way through difficulties. He had great self-reliance, and did not mind obstacles. If he had to take part in disturbances, he was ready, and had tact and tactics. He had a peculiar power of governing men, and a peculiar way of gaining confidence and esteem. He did not show off at all, and was not at all condescending. He had a great deal of sagacity. He regarded as trifles things people considered as momentous.
"(To what country did he belong?) He was probably a Greek, but he did not accord with anything of his time. He lived in the future and anticipated great changes. He did not agree with any contemporary religion, politics, fashions or manners, but was very sarcastic upon them. He was a philosopher, devoted to the useful, and cared nothing for the ornamental, either in architecture, fashions or anything else. He might not make war on the religion as he was not rancorous or rebellious, but he had different ideas in himself, and was candid in expressing them. He does not give much attention to modern times, but if he were here he would enjoy modern improvements and benevolence, but would denounce our fashions and our bigotry, and teach a primitive style of living."
Let us invoke the strong spirit of Diogenes whose sturdy freedom of thought was like that of Walt Whitman, to cooperate in the review of modern life. Such men are greatly needed to review a corrupt civilization; and where is the civilization now, where was there ever a civilization that was not corrupt? The function of Diogenes is not performed either by the pulpit or the press. A few special journals are terribly severe on special evils, but the reformatory words of the press generally are few and far between, in comparison to what is needed. The JOURNAL OF MAN does not propose to fill the hiatus and make war upon the myriad evils of society, but it must speak out, now and then, like Diogenes, especially when others neglect their duty.
What is the condition of our legislative bodies? Where is there one that does not provoke sharp criticism? The Albany correspondent of the N. Y. Sun, speaking of the legislative adjournment, says; "Mr. William F. Sheehan, leader of the Democratic minority to the Assembly, summed up the work of the Legislature of 1887 when in his address on the floor of the Assembly on the day of final adjournment, he said: 'Prayer will ascend from thousands of hearts of the citizens of this State at noon to-day for their deliverance from this Legislature. It began its session with the corrupt election of a United States Senator. It lived in bribery, and it dies a farce.' No one here regrets the adjournment except the gamblers and the lobbyists. Even the lobbyists would be glad for a vacation, as their labors in bidding for the legislative cattle the last month have been most arduous. The people of Albany look on the Legislature as a pestilence to which they must yearly submit, and they welcome its departure as a farmer does the going of a swarm of locusts from his fields.
"Whatever else may be said about the Legislature of 1887, no one ever accused it of being honest, and there is no doubt that it was industrious."
This corrupt Legislature passed two very discreditable bills which would have been made positively infamous if it had not been for the active opposition of a few friends of liberty. One of these bills was designed to add to the stringency of the present obstructive medical law; the other was designed to assist the labors of Anthony Comstock in interrupting the circulation of popular physiological literature, under pretence of suppressing obscenity.
In the Legislature of Pennsylvania, the law designed to suppress the cultivation of spiritual science by severe penalties, was favorably reported by a committee but prevented by popular indignation from passing. Yet the people were not sufficiently alert to prevent legislation in favor of that monopoly the Standard Oil Company, which is considered a betrayal of justice.
In Illinois a bill was passed in the Senate and came near passing in the House, which would have abolished all medical freedom and made it a crime for any one but a licensed doctor to help the sick in any way, even by a prayer. Verily the spirit of American liberty does not pervade American communities and American legislatures.
In Massachusetts the Old Puritanic Sunday Laws having fallen into "innocuous desuetude," an attempt to give them a partial enforcement in Boston compelled a little legislative action and the result was what might have been expected in a State in which religious opinions are allowed to interfere with the credibility of a witness, and in which Diogenes, if he were here, would be struck with the vast inconsistency between the creed of Christendom and its practice, and the vast disparity between the progress of modern knowledge and the effete system of education in our Universities. He would wonder why modern colleges are more interested in the details of Greek life and letters than in the beneficent sciences of to-day of which the Greeks knew nothing.
He would wonder why the edicts of the Pagan emperor, Constantine, concerning the observance of Sunday are observed and enforced as a religious duty, while the Divine love inculcated by Jesus Christ, which forbids all strife and war, is no more regarded by Christian nations than by the rulers of ancient Rome.
He would look into the schools and universities professedly devoted to science and literature, and ask why they have even less freedom of discussion and thought than the schools of Athens, every professor being interested to discourage the investigation of novelties in philosophy instead of being ready to welcome original investigation.
Under the new Sunday law of Massachusetts, Sunday trains and steamboat lines are at the mercy of the railroad commissioners, who can stop every one of them; but boating, yachting, and carriage driving on Sunday are free to all who have the money to pay for them. But while outdoor frolic is free-and-easy, indoor enjoyment is prohibited. Everybody is liable to five dollar fines for attending "any sport, game, or play" on Sunday, unless it has been licensed, and private families never ask a license for their own amusements. But to be present on Sunday "at any dancing," brings a liability to a $50 fine for each offence! What a terrible thing dancing is to be sure, that looking on should cost $50, while a frolic in boating and yachting is unexceptionably holy, and the fast young men may kick up a dust, kill the horses, and smash the buggies with impunity, or kill themselves by rowing in the hot sun, under whiskey stimulus on Sunday.
The laws for hotels and restaurants are even more absurd. Travellers, strangers and lodgers may be freely entertained, but if anybody else (who is he?) comes into the house, or remains on the grounds about it, on Sunday, the landlord can be fined as much as $50 at the first pop, $100 at the second pop, and at the third pop he is to be shut up and deprived of his license. Somebody else must be a terrible fellow on Sunday—and he is a dangerous customer on Saturday too, for if he comes in on Saturday evening, or even lounges on the grounds, it is a fine of five dollars for the landlord. But who is he? How is the poor landlord, or victualler to discover somebody else, who is neither lodger, stranger, nor traveller. The landlord cannot detect him, but all sheriffs, grand jurors, and constables are required to hunt for him! Vive la bagatelle!
Strictly private gambling is safe on Sunday, and our Chevaliers d'Industrie may ruin a dozen families, and provoke suicide and murder,—"plate sin with gold" and it is protected, and the swindling shyster is protected too on Sunday, for no civil process can be served on that holy day; the rogue who is bothered on that day can get exemplary damages by this law of Sunday asylum. But the poor keeper of a restaurant or of an inn, is the victim for old legislative boys to throw stones at. They have provided a hundred dollar fine for every innholder or victualler who keeps, or "suffers to be kept," on his premises, any implements "used in gaming," or which may be used for "purposes of amusement," and does not prevent such things from being used on Sunday. So if he is not extremely vigilant throughout his house and grounds, he may be caught with a hundred dollar fine, OR be imprisoned three months in the House of Correction at the pleasure of the magistrate!! and for every subsequent offense may be imprisoned in the House of Correction as much as one year, and then required to give security for obeying the law. Under such a law a malicious young hoodlum may contrive to send a landlord to jail.
To open a shop, warehouse, or workhouse on Sunday is a fifty dollar offense, and it is fifty dollars also for doing "any manner of labor, business or work" on Sunday, unless the judge considers it a matter of necessity or charity; nevertheless, the "making of butter and cheese" is good Sunday work, if we do not open the doors which would bring on a $50 fine. So is the work of steam, gas and electricity, newspapers, telegraphs, telephones, druggists, milkmen, (bakers before 10 and after 4,) boat houses, livery stables, ferry boats, and street cars. But to catch a fish or fire a pistol on Sunday is a $10 offense, and to look on at a game of chess is a $50 crime. However, the law does not punish whistling on Sunday, unless the whistler has spectators, then it is a $50 business for all concerned. To read Longfellow's Excelsior on Sunday to a parlor of company is a $50 crime. Reading Milton's Paradise Lost, or the American Declaration of Independence would also rank as criminal business, being an entertainment, and a party of twenty playing a game of croquet may be fined a thousand dollars.
Verily, if it were not for such hypocritical and asinine legislation as this, we might forget the history of New England witchcraft, and the hanging of Quakers in sight of the spot where this law was enacted as an improvement on a still worse, but practically obsolete statute.
Such Sunday legislation is a fair evidence of the absence of true religion, and the predominance of hypocrisy. It is not enforced, and is not expected to be. All the Sunday legislation in New York did not prevent the immense Syracuse Salt Works from carrying on their work day and night. Gov. Hill and the N. Y. Legislature have shown their character by increasing the penalties of the Sunday laws, but they have not approached the Massachusetts standard.
A BILL TO DESTROY THE INDIANS.
From the Boston Pilot.
The Puritans of New England and the Cavaliers of Virginia alike treated the Indians as though they had no rights of manhood. The Catholics, Baptists, and Quakers treated them kindly and justly. The Puritans took Indian lands without permission or compensation. The Catholics, Baptists and Quakers bought lands from the Indians in an honorable way.
The two policies have been in conflict for nearly three centuries.
The Government has held to the policy of buying lands from the Indians, thus recognizing their ownership; but it has not always paid the price agreed upon. Now, under the lead of Senator Dawes Congress has passed a bill which annuls the treaties, and overrides all proprietary rights of every tribe, except nine of the most civilized.
His bill is the "Indian Land in Severalty Bill." It pretends to be in the interest of the Indians, but that pretense is a fraud. It is wholly in the interest of railroad companies, land syndicates, and private white settlers.
The treaties of 1868 and 1876 guarantee the Sioux tribes undisturbed possession of their reservation in Dakota. Not an acre of that land can be taken from them without the consent of three-fourths of them. So read the treaties signed by the United States Commissioners and confirmed by the United States Senate.
The Dawes Severalty Bill takes the Sioux reservation from the control of the Sioux without asking the consent of a single Indian, surveys it as though it was a body of public land, and then says to the Sioux: The Government will return a small homestead for each of you, as individuals, and after twenty-five years you shall have titles to these small tracts, but the remainder of the reservation, (about four-fifth) must be opened to white settlers.
The Sioux protest against this outrage, and have appealed to the National Indian Defence Association at Washington, D. C., to protect their rights. This association has resolved to test the constitutionality of this bill in the Supreme Court of the United States, and asks all friends of justice to sustain them in this legal contest.
MISCELLANEOUS INTELLIGENCE.
THE SEYBERT COMMISSION has reported against the claims of Spiritualism. Their report will not even have the effect of the French Academy report against animal magnetism, which checked its progress in the medical profession but not among the people; but before the century passed, the medical profession has taken up the science in earnest, and re-named it hypnotism. The Seybert report will not even be a temporary damper, for while thousands of inquirers, fully as competent as the commission, and many of them far more competent to the investigation, have made themselves familiar with the facts, the commission has done nothing but to emphasize the fact already familiar among the intelligent, of the prevalence of fraud among mediums. Notwithstanding the wonderful powers of Slade, no one acquainted with his history would place any reliance on his integrity. The more intelligent Spiritualists understood such matters, and the Ladies' Aid (Spiritualist) Society of Boston, recently had considerable amusement in the exhibition in their parlors of the materializing and dematerializing wire apparatus used by the fraudulent medium, Mrs. Ross, which was said to have been carried in her bustle. Mrs. Ross when prosecuted for her frauds was found to be protected by the law of coverture which makes the husband alone responsible. This is a relic of the idea of female subordination and obedience which ought to be abolished. The progress of spiritualism has been marked by as many follies as that of any popular movement, and the bequest of $60,000, by Mr. Seybert, to the old fogies of the Pennsylvania University was among the stupidest of these follies. If a friend of Galileo had made such a bequest to the Catholic church in his time, to get an opinion of the new astronomy, it would have been as sensible a proceeding. It will however have one good result; it will erect a permanent monument to the ignorance of the universities, a record from which they cannot hereafter escape. Prof. Leidy was one of the salaried commissioners whose mental status was thus exhibited in the last journal:
"Your doctrine of life eternal, And everything else supernal, Might well be pronounced an infernal Delusion!"
THE EVILS THAT NEED ATTENTION, mentioned in the JOURNAL for May, are as rampant as ever. The big combination in Chicago to raise the price of wheat by a corner, utterly burst on the 14th of June, leaving a few ruined speculators. The Chicago News says: "What is called buying and selling futures in grain, is no more buying and selling in the innocent and proper interpretation of the words than the wagering on horse races is buying and selling horses. It is a species of gambling as pernicious to public morals as it is contrary to public policy." The Chicago Herald says, "No one is in love with a cornerer who corners. Nobody wastes any pity on a cornerer who gets cornered himself." Such crimes in a petty way may be punished, but we need law for the millionaire gamblers who not only rob each other, but fleece the entire nation at the same time.
CONDENSED ITEMS.—Mesmerism, in Paris. M. G. de Torcy has introduced a mesmerized woman into the lion's cage, where she unconsciously puts her head in the lion's mouth: then, in a state of cataleptic rigidity, head and feet resting on two stools, the lion is made to jump over the rigid body, then with paws resting on her body, to pull a string by his teeth and thus fire a pistol. Of course this draws enthusiastic audiences. Medical Freedom. The attempts at restrictive medical legislation have been defeated in Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Maine. In Maine, the bill had passed the Legislature and was approved by Gov. Bodwell, but upon re-consideration he vetoed it and the Senate then rejected it. The Allopathic State Society is quite indignant and calls it "atrocious" that they cannot enforce a law which the Senate and governor rejected. Mrs. Post in Iowa has been acquitted and will not be punished at all for the awful crime of healing a patient by prayer! The acquittal appears to be on the ground of the unconstitutionally of the law. The Victoria Jubilee in Faneuil Hall, Boston, called out an immense indignation meeting, and many eloquent protests. But for the energy of the police a riot might have occurred at the time of the festival. Delightful Homes. Asheville, N. C., 2339 feet above tide water, has a delightful climate, especially for pulmonary invalids. Northern Georgia is an elevated region of remarkable general health, and freedom from malarious and consumptive diseases. California has still more delightful homes of health and beauty. Colorado has twelve towns over 5,000 feet above the sea, and ten over 10,000.
CHAPTER IV.—CRANIOSCOPY.
The Study of the Comparative Development of the Brain through the Cranium—Importance of Cranioscopy—First Step—Facial organs—Miller, Pestalozzi, Danton, Mirabeau—Caricatures—Upper and lower parts of face—Female faces—Mode of comparing organs—Mode of manipulation—Bony irregularities—Profile comparison of height and depth—Vacca Pechassee and Lewis—Old errors—Difficulties in estimation—Morbid conditions—Criminals—Napoleon—Negro murderer.
The reader now understands the conformation of the brain, and the general character of its different regions. It is important that he should as soon as possible begin the study of heads, and learn to judge correctly their development. When he can do this, he has an inexhaustible source of knowledge continually with him, and every new acquaintance becomes an interesting study in ascertaining the indications of his head and comparing them with his daily conduct and manners. The more thorough and careful the study, the greater the satisfaction and delight that it yields. The good cranioscopist continually grows in knowledge, and solves all the problems of character presented in society. But he who simply studies the elements of character or organic faculties, and does not become acquainted with the organs and their measurement, soon finds his knowledge too abstract and remote from his daily life; and, instead of increasing his stock of knowledge on this subject, he continually loses more and more of what he has gained. It was for this reason, mainly, that the medical profession gradually dropped the discoveries of Gall, which would never have ceased to interest them if they had learned to apply them to the study of men and animals.
I hope that no reader will neglect this chapter, or fail to reduce its instructions to practice, for on that it depends whether he shall become a practical master of cerebral science, and be able to read every character with which he meets.
The first step in studying a head is to observe its general contour,—whether the forehead projects far in front of the ear, to indicate intellect; whether the upper surface rises above the forehead sufficiently to indicate the nobler qualities, and whether it is balanced or overpowered by the breadth and depth of the base of the skull and thickness of the neck. In connection with this, we may observe that the base of the brain is also expressed in the lower part of the face which corresponds to the organs for the expression of animal force, while the upper part of the face is devoted to the expression of the upper and anterior parts of the brain. The expressional faculties shown in the face do not always coincide exactly with the real power of the organs thus expressed; but if they do not, they at least indicate their activity and habitual display; for faculties habitually indulged will show their organic indications in the face, while those which are suppressed or restrained will be less conspicuous in the face.
The reader will understand that organs located for observation on the face are organs of the brain lying behind the face, which may be reached and stimulated through it, as other organs are reached and stimulated through the cranium and integuments. The contour of the face cannot reveal the organs behind it by physical necessity, as does the contour of the skull, yet observation induces me to rely upon estimates based on facial development. I think there is a correspondence of development between the brain and face, based upon vital laws, and also a direct influence of each organ upon the surface that covers it, so that when the organ is excited the surface becomes flushed, and when it is kept inactive the surface becomes pale and withered. This may be most readily observed at the organ of Love of Stimulus, immediately in front of the cavity of the ear. The surface presents a shrunken appearance after many years of rigid abstinence, but becomes plump, bloated, or high-colored, in those whose habits are intemperate. I have also observed an itching sensation at the surface when the organs behind it were active. Any one may observe a warmth and fulness in the upper part of the face when the social sentiments are very active. In the act of blushing, the flush comes upon the part of the face associated with modest and refined sentiments, the centre of which is below the external angle of the eye, at the lower margin of the cheek-bone.
The contrasting development of the upper and lower parts of the face may be seen when we compare such characters as the enthusiastic philanthropist and educational reformer, Pestalozzi, and the high-principled and intellectual Hugh Miller, the Scotch geologist, with such as Danton, the terrible demagogue of the French revolution, and Mirabeau, the brilliant but unprincipled orator.
No skilful artist in caricature fails to observe these principles. When he would degrade a character, he magnifies the lower part of the face; and when he would represent a more refined character, the lower part of the face becomes correspondingly delicate.
When Puck would represent, a miserable wretch, he presents such a head as the following; and when a New York journalist desired to caricature an opponent as a saloon politician, he diminished the upper and developed the lower part of the head, as presented here.
All observers of countenance and character unconsciously act upon these principles and recognize a great difference in the expressions of two faces,—one predominant in the lower and the other in the upper portion of the face. That there was any scientific basis for this was entirely unknown before my discoveries of the organs behind the face, which modify its development and expression. My lectures upon this subject in 1842 were attended by the physiognomical writer, Redfield, who derived from them many important suggestions.
When the lower part of the face is massive, broad, and prominent, while the basilar region is broad and deep, with a stout neck, we know the great force and activity of the animal nature, and unless the upper surface of the brain is well developed all over, we may expect some excess in the way of violence, temper, selfishness, perversity, sensuality, dishonesty, avarice, rudeness of manners, moral insensibility, slander, contentiousness, jealousy, envy, revenge, or some other form of wickedness, according to the especial conformation.
In the faces of women, we find the activity of the amiable sentiments marked by the fulness and roseate color of the upper part of the face, while the lower portion is more delicate than in the masculine face.
But although the facial developments generally correspond with the activity of the organs expressed, the rule is not invariable, as the reader will learn hereafter that the facial developments may be moderate when the character is not excitable or demonstrative.
If the upper surface of the head is sufficiently high, we know that great capacity for virtue exists, capable of restraining evil inclinations, and producing admirable traits of character, according to the organs especially developed.
When we study the special organs we determine the special virtues or vices. For example, a head may have a good general development upward, giving many very pleasing traits of character, and yet be so deficient in the region of conscientiousness (while the selfish group that gives breadth at the ears is large) as to produce great moral unsoundness and a treacherous violation of obligations or disregard of principle.
The most delicate task in craniological study, and the most important, is the balancing of opposite tendencies belonging to antagonistic organs; and it was for the want of the knowledge of antagonisms that the Gallian system so often failed in describing character and its representatives before the public have made the most disastrous blunders. Shrewd and honest observers discovered the imperfections of the science.[2]
[2] A letter just received from Australia states that the writer had for many years been a student of phrenology, and had ascertained from examining hundreds of crania that phrenology "stood on a basis of fact, but was wrong as well as deficient in some of its details. But though I could point to several parts of the skull where the readings of professionals as well as myself were always unreliable, I could not discover the real function of the organs in these places."
While the eye readily gives us the contour of heads that have not much hair, there is but little accurate judgment without the use of the hand, which is the first thing to be learned. Not the tips of the fingers, but the whole hand should be laid upon the head gently, to cover as much surface as possible, while with a gentle pressure we cause the scalp to move slightly, and thus feel through it the exact form of the cranium as correctly as if the bones were exposed to view. If in this examination we find any sharp prominences, which might be called bumps, we attribute them to the growth of bone, which does not indicate the growth of the brain. The latter is indicated only by the general contour.
A little anatomical knowledge will prevent us from being deceived, and enable us to make due allowances. There are no great difficulties in making a correct estimate, and the anatomists who have taught their pupils that correct cranial observations could not be made, only showed their own ignorance of the subject. We must consider the cranium as though all osseous protuberances had been shaved off, leaving the smooth, curving contour of the skull. The principal projection to be removed is the superciliary ridge corresponding to the brow at the base of the forehead. It is formed by the projection of the external plate of the skull, leaving a separation or cavity between it and the inner plate, which cavity is called the frontal sinus, and is sometimes half an inch wide. As there is no positive method of determining its dimensions in the living head, there must ever be some doubt concerning the development of the perceptive organs which it covers. The superciliary ridge at the external angle of the brow extends really as much as three-quarters of an inch from the brain. From this angle a ridge of bone (the temporal arch) extends upward and backward, separating the lateral surface of the head from the frontal and upper surfaces. This ridge is a convenient landmark, but must be excluded from an estimate of development as it is merely osseous. It extends back on the head a little behind its middle. The sagittal suture on the median line of the upper surface usually presents a slight, bony elevation or ridge (see the engraving of the skull, Chapter III.), and the lambdoid suture on the back of the head is frequently rough. A superficial practical phrenologist (of great pretensions) at Cincinnati, in examining the head of a gentleman of mild character, found the lambdoid suture quite rough, and gave him a terrifically pugnacious character, not knowing enough to distinguish between osseous and cerebral development. The occipital knob on the median line between the cerebrum and cerebellum, has been already mentioned. The mastoid process, the bony prominence behind the ear is a projection exterior to the cerebellum. Where it starts from the cranium above and behind the cavity of the ear, we may judge of basilar development by the breadth of the head, but the basilar depth which is more important is to be judged by the extension downward, which was illustrated in the last chapter by comparing the skulls of J. R. Smith and the slave-trading count. |
|