The missing sense, and the hidden things which it might reveal

Front matter

H ■

Hi m

^H

Chapter I. The Unseen Universe

PAGE

Physical Science on the Ultimate Constitution of Matter 8-9

The Universal Ether 9-11

The Nature of Perception through the Senses 12

Realities not Perceptible through the Senses; Phenomena of

Telepathy and Clairvoyance 13-17

Discussion of what these Facts Imply. 18-20

Discussion of Dream Imagery ; Demonstration of the Reality

of Spirits 24-27

Recapitulation , 27-29

The World Conceived as Without the Sense of Sight 29-31

Chapter II. Spirit

Summary of Conclusions and Discussion of Evidence from Preceding Chapter 32-36

Functions of Spirit Manifested in the Lower Animals, Hence

these Animals Immortal 36-39

Spirit the Principle of Life 40

Intelligence Manifested in Vital Processes ; God made Evident . 41-46

Chapter III. Man And His Meaning

All Life from the Living ; Hereditary and Congenital Foundation of Character 47-49

The Growth of Character ; Man a Resultant of all his Past 49-50

Tl CONTENTS.

PAGE

The Growth of Character in Infancy 51-52

in Childhood ....53-55

in Manhood ; 55-58

Success 58-60

In what Character Consists. 60

Goodness Loved to the Degree in which it is Perceived 61

The Pursuit of the Ideal 61-66

The Character of God Revealed through *the Love of Ideal

Excellence and the Principle of Causality .66-67

Recapitulation and Deduction of the True Purpose of Life 67-69

Chapter IV. The Problem Of Evil

The True Purpose of Life a Key to the Problem , .70-75

Analysis of Evil according to Origin 75-78

The Penalties of Evil 79-80

Repentance and Forgiveness , 80-82

Chapter V. Destiny

Happiness Dependent on the Choice of the Spirit for Good 83-84

The Missing Sense, with Enlarged Freedom. Its Necessary

Effects 84-85

The Evil of Secrecy. The Bodily Veil a Condition Necessary to

Adapt the World for the Development of Character 85-86

Probable Effects of New Conditions 87-88

Right Character Bears Its Own Title to Heaven 88-89

Chapter VI. Authority And Truth

Mode of the Mind's Growth by Assimilation of Truth 90

Substitution of Authority for Private Judgment Pernicious 91

Necessity of Effort for the Acquisition of Truth 91-92

All Truth the Word of God 92-94

All Human Perceptions of Truth Tainted with Error 94-97

THE MISSING- SENSE.

Chapter I. The Unseen Universe

Thinkees are naturally divided into two great schools, materialists and spiritualists.

Between these schools of thought there is a great question at issue. -

Scientific research, the loyal and faithful study of facts, is the method by which both schools should seek the truth, which is the reality underlying, determining, and causing all appearances.

The materialist is rather prone to write and speak as if his school of thought were pre-eminently scientific, as if all others were prejudiced by the influence of an effete theology and so bound in the trammels of moribund creeds_ that they are incapable of considering facts with clearness of mind, and interpreting them correctly at their proper value in revealing the uncolored truth.

Yet the tendency of scientific research of late years is far from being all in the direction of materialism. Among the deepest students of nature, including some of the world's most eminent chemists and physicists, astronomers, spectroscopists, and philosophers, the idea has grown from a suspicion almost to a conviction that the elementary forms of matter as known to chemistry are in reality compounds. By the aid of the spectroscope iron has been seen to decompose, in the sun, into two or more constituents judged to resemble hydrogen gas more nearly than any other ponderable substance with which we are acquainted. Similar spectroscopic evidence, both in the sun and by the aid of the electric arc, points to a similar constitution in the case of many other elements. From these, and other indications derived from the relations of their atomic weights, it has become probable, though not proved, that nearly all the elements are compound, hydrogen being the most probable exception. If this is true it means that the elements are really fewer than those known to chemistry, and that the forms which they take as they approach simplicity are more ^nd more intangible, imponderable, and invisible.

Sir William Thomson, perhaps one of the profoundest students of nature living, and one who in the application of mathematics to the solution of the deepest problems of science certainly has no known equal, has put forth a theory of the ultimate constitution of matter, in which he assumes that the material atoms consist of vortex rings in the universal ether, inconceivably small but similar to the rings which smokers take pleasure in puffing from their lips, and which also may often be seen escaping from the smoke-stack of a motionless but puffing locomotive.

Such rings are formed in air and gases by friction against the edges of the opening from which they escape, but in a perfect fluid there could be no friction, and in such a fluid Sir William Thomson has mathematically demonstrated that no material agency could ever create such rings, and that, if once existing, no material agency could destroy them, but they w r ould exist forever. Further than this, he has shown by experiments with such rings in still-air boxes and by mathematical corrections to fit them to the perfect fluid assumed, that such rings, in the few cases that could be used in comparison, actually would and do behave toward each other as the atoms of matter do.

This is but a theory; however, together with the indications of the compound nature of the elements, it does go * to show that the tendencies of scientific research point toward the conclusion that matter as known to chemistry and physics is but a modified form of the universal ether. If, in the light of increasing knowledge, this proves true, which the science of the day pronounces probable, then matter is made of ether, and the power that made it can reduce it to ether again ; and though the evidence of this yet falls short of a demonstration, nevertheless it is the best light that science has to offer on the subject of the ultimate constitution of matter. This is to say that the best indications of physical science point to the conclusion that " the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal." Neither is the truth of this conclusion dependent on the compound nature of the elements — that is, on whether there are intermediate forms or not between those in which they are known to chemistry and the ether, for, of those who have searched into their nature most closely, some of the most eminent have said that the atoms, whether simple or compound, bear very much the marks of manufactured articles.

This universal ether, What is it ? Invisible, imponderable, intangible, as spirit itself, our senses do not put us in any relation with it, and we cannot even guess its possibilities. Only indirectly by the aid of the most spiritual of our senses, sight, are we aware of its existence. We can study the qualities of light, and when we become aware that light is a tremor, and we study the character of its pulsations, the reason perceives the necessary existence of the substance that trembles, the medium that transmits this tremor through space to us. Otherwise the existence of the ether would never be suspected,

That this ether can thrill with such a tremor is a slight revelation of its nature. From these short, sharp, and inconceivably quick pulsations, and from the fact that their motion is across and not along the line of the ray, we know that this ether fills space full as no form of matter fills it. Matter is more or less dense, but in no form so dense that it could not be denser. There are spaces between the molecules of matter, but there is no such space unoccupied in the substance of the ether, or vastly less if any. Some of our hardest solids, as tempered steel, are capable of vibrating in a similar manner to the ether, but judged by this characteristic, the ether is vastly harder, solider, and denser than the hardest solid we know. It is, however, the lack of the qualities of matter, rather than the qualities which it manifests, that makes the ether so incomprehensible to us. All matter offers resistance to pressure and requires force to put it in motion or to cause motion of another substance in it. But the ether offers no resistance. Even in the case of a comet, which may be so light that its weight bears no measurable relation to that of the lightest of planetary bodies, and which is moving through the ether with a velocity greater than that of any planet, there is no evidence of any resistance to its motion by the ether through which it moves. The retardation which has been observed in such cases, is sufficiently accounted for by the comet's proximity to other bodies, or its actual contact with material substances. The ether behaves toward matter as if matter had no existence. Matter does not seem to exclude the ether from the space which it occupies ; we cannot in any way make an ether vacuum either partial or complete, and in solids so constituted that they are transparent, the vibrations of light in their substance bespeak the presence of the ether there as if the matter were absent. Keciprocally matter in motion goes about its business as if the ether had no existence. Ether and matter seem to bear no discoverable relation to each other.

All "matter has weight. It is by this quality that we estimate its quantity, even in the most delicate researches of chemistry. We cannot know whether the ether has weight or not, because, as we cannot isolate any portion of it, nor shut it out from any space, nor change the density of any part of it, it must support its own pressure everywhere perfectly in every direction. However, since the ether fills all space, and space can have no boundaries, it can have no centre of gravity, and, therefore, presumably no weight. Or, from another point of view, it is as if every assignable place were its exact centre of gravity, and gravitation must therefore in that place act equally in all directions whence as before there could be no weight. Another consideration, however, makes it seem almost certain that gravitation is not a property of the ether, even if we could isolate a portion of it and its mass were finite — that is, that if it were, then the weight of the planets and stars would be blended with that of the ether, and their gravity could not act upon each other as it does directly as the mass and inversely as the square of the distance, as if the ether did not exist. But this is pure speculation. Our senses do not put us in relation to the ether, do not allow us to examine it, nevertheless its existence is not in any sense doubtful, it is real, and we are sure of it.

Let it be noticed here that in all matters of external observation our knowledge comes to us through the senses, and that there are three elements involved in the reality and truthfulness of the knowledge so acquired. First, there are properties or qualities of something external to ourselves, of which we become aware ; second, there is an adaptation of our physical constitution to perceive these qualities, which adaptation is the sense ; third, there is an intelligence within, which receives and takes notice of what the senses communicate. The reality of the external qualities, or of the substance to which they pertain, is in no way dependent on the intelligence that perceives them, certainly not on the physical adaptation of man's body to perceive these qualities. The sense is the bridge which connects us with what is external to us. We receive the knowledge that our senses stand ready to convey to us only as we direct our intelligent attention to the senses which are to communicate it.

We often gaze absently out on the world and are not for the time aware of the picture which the light is painting on our retina ; under the excitement of battle the soldier may be wounded without knowing when the wound is received. We are aware of but very few of the innumerable audible sounds which reach our ears. Without the attention, our senses are like the telegraphwires clicking away their message when the receiving operator is absent, we are none the wiser for the impressions they convey. The amount of knowledge our senses may give us depends quite as much on the degree of trained intelligent attention which we give to their messages as on the fineness and perfection of the senses themselves, but without the existence of the senses the attention could perceive nothing.

Scientific knowledge has greatly increased of late years in regard to external realities which our senses are adapted to perceive, but as we have observed, these realities would exist the same if our senses had not been adapted to perceive them, and science has, in the ether, found one reality that has no qualities to which our senses are adapted, except the one quality of transmitting the vibrations of light.

There are other realities which, like the ether, our senses do not put us in relation with. Some of them are of the greatest importance, and intimately near to us. Here and there we can touch them in some secondhanded way. Something that comes to our understanding implies their reality. Some truth could not be true and they not be real. Yet because our senses cannot grasp them, because we cannot manipulate, bottle up, weigh, and examine their substance, the school of materialists denies their existence.

Ever since the American Revolution the story has been current that when Major Andre was tried as a spy before General Washington's court-martial, his sister in England saw or became aware of that trial in a dream. We are told that she described the court-room, its furniture, its occupants, and their positions to her companions, at the time the trial was in progress, with as much minuteness and accuracy as would have been possible if she had been bodily present there. All this,' weeks before the slow-sailing vessels, the only means of communication across the ocean at the time, could bring her the news which proved the vision true. The late Professor Joseph Haven, of Amherst, and afterward of Chicago, has referred to this story in his text-book on Mental Philosophy, remarking, however, that he knows not on how good authority it rests. It belongs to a class of phenomena rare enough to cause remark and to excite wonder, but common enough .for very many, perhaps most people, to be aware of instances the authenticity of which they do not doubt. When anything of this kind occurs the motive does not usually exist to lead to its immediate publication, but it is usually spoken of quietly to intimate friends. If sufficiently remarkable to serve a purpose, it may long afterward be alluded to by other persons in print, having passed through a traditional period first. If there were no other instances known of similar facts, the suspicion might be justified that it was a creation of fancy, but as it is, being an instance of a class of phenomena whose reality is well known, the story is worthy of credence.

An example of similar unexplained consciousness of things at a distance has come to the writer's knowledge at second hand only through a perfectly trustworthy channel. This is of a sea-captain's wife, whose consciousness followed her husband in his ship all over the earth and made her very frequently aware of his condition and occupation. An instance of this which occurred while her husband was at home will make the nature of this communication as plain, perhaps, as anything could. The captain had excused himself and remained at home one Sunday while his wife went to church. During the service, while she was resting her head on the back of the next pew, she' became aware that her husband was rubbing something with his hand. She did not know what it was, but when she reached home she questioned him and found that he had been polishing a sea-bean. The fact that he was doing this slyly, the act at that time -being contrary to his wife's notions of propriety, seemed to be the cause of its impressing her consciousness.

For another instance of this kind of consciousness of things distant, and of which I am at liberty to state the

THE UXSEEN UNIVERSE. 15

evidence to establish its truth, I am indebted to Professor R. C. Davis, Librarian of Michigan University, who learned of the fact while on a visit to the New England seaboard during the summer of 1886. Professor Davis having written to his informant, Captain George Fisher, of Osterville, Barnstable County, Mass., for the particulars, received the following :

" On November 13th, 1837, while in the Indian Ocean, whaling, in latitude 33° 12 7 south, longitude 73° east, on board the bark Malay, of Salem, Captain Edward Barnard, of Nantucket, master, George Fisher, third mate, fell from the main top-gallant yard and struck in the larboard quarter boat, falling sixty-six feet. His mother, Abbie Fisher, of Nantucket, in a dream saw him fall and gave a cry in her sleep. His father said to her ' What is the matter ?' waking her, and she said, ' George has just had a fall.' She set it down in the old Farmers' Almanac — Eobert B. Thomas' Almanac— and it proved to be just the same date or time that he fell. George Fisher."

The George Fisher who is authority for this story is the same man who fell from the main top-gallant yard in the middle of the Indian Ocean in 1837, and Professor Davis vouches for his trustworthiness, and that he has the records mentioned. Professor Davis first became aware of this incident in a conversation with Captain Fisher in regard to the custom which had prevailed in his family for several generations, of noting down in the almanac mentioned anything which they wished to keep on record, or which, at the time of its occurrence, seemed to them remarkable. Captain Fisher said that he had these almanacs on file from near the beginning of the present century, and mentioned one entry as curious, it being the record of a dream in which his mother had seen him fall, and, as she told his father at the time, break in the side of a boat and break his ribs, which injuries, as then stated, were inflicted both on the man and the boat.

Instances of this peculiar consciousness of things at a distance are not rare, but, possibly because they are felt to border on the ghostly, and because the science of the age, which is commonly thought to sweep the whole universe in its range, offers no explanation of them, they are usually passed by, and left out of the catalogue of facts to be scientifically considered ; we seldom hear them mentioned, and read of them yet more rarely. As a recent writer has remarked : u The ghost and his kindred have declined in the estimation of the people. The growing intelligence of the age has caused the people to no longer care to talk or read about them as they once did, and they no longer half -believe in them." This is true, and the world is to be congratulated on being so well rid of the grotesque fancies with which ignorance used to frighten it, but if with so much of the false something of the true is also placed under the ban it is not well. Phenomena of the class we are considering are facts, and to ignore a fact is disloyalty to truth and treason to science itself. We do not understand facts of this order, but evidence is not wanting to prove that they are real. It may not often happen that an instance occurs of such consciousness of things across an ocean, but who has not known instances where one mind has been impressed by another without the medium of speech or sign ? My wife sometimes becomes aware of my thought without my uttering or acting it. I see a person in a distant part of an audience whom I fancy to be an old acquaintance, and watching him I soon attract his atten-

THE UNSEED UNIVERSE. 17

tion. Again, I feel a restless inclination to turn round because I feel myself watched from behind. Such phenomena are so common that they can be paralleled in the experience of most people, yet they are all of the same kind with the vision of Major Andre's sister, or the telltale consciousness of the sea-captain's wife.*

* This matter was originally written in January, 1886. Since that time the labors of the Society for Psychical Research, London, England, have resulted in the accumulation of a vast amount of evidence bearing on the matters here discussed.

In a work under the title " Phantasms of the Living," by E. Gurney, F. W. H. Myers, and F. Podmore, published under the auspices of that society, more than seven hundred well-authenticated instances of appearances and communications all closely coincident with distant realities, and selected according to rigid rules of evidence which would have excluded all the cases that we have used unless it be the George Fisher incident, have been collected, classified, and discussed, together with a large amount of experimental work. The result is summed up thus :

" The main theses of this work, which its authors consider established, are :

" 1. Experiment proves that telepathy, the supersensuous transference of thoughts and feelings from one mind to another, is a fact in nature.

" 2. Testimony proves that phantasms, impressions, voices, or figures of persons undergoing some crisis, especially death, are perceived by their friends and relatives with a frequency which chance cannot explain.

" 3. These phantasms are instances of the supersensory action of one mind on another."

It hardly need be said that no effort has been made in this book to collect evidence of this kind, but only to give instances enough and of a kind to convey a clear understanding of the nature of the facts on which our argument is founded, the diffused consciousuess of their reality which prevails being thought sufficient with this illustration to found the argument upon. The collection and discussion of evidence, though perhaps necessary to give a proper scientific standing to our argument, is not the purpose of this book. This work has now been done, however, and well done, by the society above mentioned, and a broad basis of evidence has been established thereby

P THE MISSING SENSE.

These facts imply that the mind is capable of receiving impressions from and making impressions on others at a distance, in some manner not understood, through some medium that our senses do not put us in relation with, and which, therefore, we cannot avail ourselves of at will.

We seem to be most susceptible to such influences when most passive. The vigilance that fits us for our duties in relation with material things, which puts our senses on the alert and fixes our attention on the impressions that are conveyed to our understanding through them, which puts body and mind in gear with our will to do our bidding, this throws us out of range of these occult influences, but if we had a sense that put us in relation with this medium and this manner of communication, so that we could use them at will, then vigilant attention would make these communications perfect instead of putting us out of their range. The reality of such communications and of their medium is not affected by the fact that we have no such sense.

Whether passive or active, voluntary or involuntary, such impressions could not be given nor received if the spiritual capacity to give and receive them and the medium of communication through which they are given under our argument that the universe and ourselves are equipped for the use of a missing sense.

The language adopted by the authors of the work referred to will no doubt be generally adopted. Communication to one mind without sensible means, of the ideas and perceptions of another, is telepathy. The perception of distant things and events, so far as they may not be communicated from an intelligence present with them, is clairvoyance, a use of language which is not new, but a distinction from telepathy which it is well to make, though the constitution of the universe which adapts it to the play of the one faculty may as easily fit it for the other.

THE UNSEED UNIVERSE. 19

and received did not exist. We have as much right to consider the existence of such a power and such a medium certain as we have to consider certain the existence of the ether or of matter.

As in the case of the ether, science has learned something of its nature from the study of light, the only fact that we can study in which that ether surely plays its part, so in case of this nameless reality let us learn what we can of its nature from the facts we have to study in which it is concerned. In cases of consciousness of things at a distance similar to those cited there are two conceivable modes of action.

1. It might possibly be true that the spiritual person departs from the body which is yet left alive, and betakes itself to. the presence of the scenes of which it becomes conscious.

If this explanation were accepted, the existence of conscious intelligence, of the person, apart from its material embodiment would be granted, and the falsity of the materialistic philosophy established by the fact.

But, since this would imply a division of the spiritual person which feels itself to be indivisible, a part being left behind to continue the functions of life, or that there are two or more separable spiritual natures in each conscious, intelligent person, an hypothesis which there is no other reason for supposing true, or else that the principle of life is not spiritual which we shall show reason to believe false, this explanation is probably not true.

Moreover, since cases of this consciousness of distant things occur in fits of absent-mindedness, without profound unconsciousness of bodily surroundings or even sleep, and since analogous facts occur without the suspension of ordinary vigilance even, the probability becomes almost a certainty that this explanation is false.

2. The intelligence, the spiritual person, that experiences this consciousness of distant things may remain located in the living body, while this consciousness is received through the agency of some medium external to itself and some spiritual adaptation in itself to this medium, which medium and adaptation would be more analogous to light and the sense of sight than to anything else within the range of our common and sensible experience. And as the other hypothesis is probably false, the probability is as strong that this is true.

On this assumption let us try to see what possibilities are implied. Our one sense, that gives us information of things at a distance, sight, is very imperfect. According to the laws of perspective, objects vanish into imperceptible points very quickly as they recede from us. But in the case of Major Andre's sister, the minute details of the scene that was passing three thousand miles from her on the other side of the Atlantic were as clear as if she had been bodily present there.

As in this case so in others. Wherever we find instances of the manifestation of this possible faculty we find indications that neither distance nor intervening objects are any hindrance to it, and that probably no time is consumed in transmitting the communication. It follows that if we had a sense that could make this possibility available to us, it would excel the sense of sight in the amount and value of the information it would convey to us as much as, or more than, the sense of sight excels that of feeling. As we have no such sense, of course the indirect, imperfect way in which such influences can reach us does not allow us to acquire any new ideas, nor to add to our stock of knowledge through this channel, but could we have such a sense, we are not now able to guess what hidden things of the minute, of the inaccessible, of the invisible, of the incomprehensible even, it would reveal to us, what a mighty instrument of knowledge it would be.

The class of experiences which we have been considering, which for want of a definite name w T e must call consciousness of things at a distance, sometimes affects our dreams.

Doubtless we are influenced in this way most freely in our sleep, the attention to things affecting our physical senses being then most thoroughly off guard ; but on these occasions there is the same difficulty in recalling the details when we return to wakefulness that occurs in ordinary dreams. The experiences that occur while their subject is awake are apt to be more precisely recalled, and to that extent more valuable for study. Let us, however, take notice of the fact that our minds in sleep are susceptible to influences that are not wholly subjective, but which come from sources having external reality at the time they are received, and which do not come from impressions on the physical senses misinterpreted by the fancy unguided by judgment.

The usually accepted physical theory of dreams is that they consist of memories disconnected from their proper relations with other things, set together by an unguided fancy or influenced by slight impressions through the physical senses ; that except as such impressions through the senses influence them they are wholly subjective.