A SELF-PROPELLING, SELF-POISED PENCIL. 203 phenomena of a new and important character? Let the reader consult his work for the answer. In addition to these freaks played on human credulity by "psychic force," Mr. Crookes gives another class of phenomena, which he terms. "special instances," which seem (?) to point to the agency of an exterior intelligence.* "I have been," says Mr. Crookes, "with Miss Fox when she has been writing a message automatically to one person present, whilst a message to another person, on another subject, was being given alphabetically by means of 'raps,' and the whole time she was conversing freely with a third person, on a subject totally different from either. . . . During a seance with Mr. Home, a small lath moved across the table to me, in the light, and delivered a message to me by tapping my hand; I repeating the alphabet, and the lath tapping me at the right letters . . . being at a distance from Mr. Home's hands." The same lath, upon request of Mr. Crookes, gave him "a telegraphic message through the Morse alphabet, by taps on my hand" (the Morse code being quite unknown to any other person present, and but imperfectly to himself), "and," adds Mr. Crookes, "it convinced me that there was a good Morse operator at the other end of the line, WHEREVER THAT MIGHT BE." Would it be undig nified in the present case to suggest that Mr. Cox should search for the operator in his private principality-Psychic Land? But the same lath does more and better. In full light in Mr. Crookes' room it is asked to give a message, “.. a pencil and some sheets of paper had been ly ing on the centre of the table; presently the pencil rose on its point, and after advancing by hesitating jerks to the paper, fell down. and again fell. . . . After three unsuccessful attempts, a small wooden lath" (the Morse operator) "which was lying near upon the table, slid towards the pencil, and rose a few inches from the table; the pencil rose again, and propping itself against the lath, the two together made an effort to mark the paper. It fell, and then a joint effort was made again. After a third trial the lath gave it up, and moved back to its place; the pencil lay as it fell across the paper, and an alphabetic message told us : "We have tried to do as you asked, but our power is exhausted." The word our, as the joint intelligent efforts of the friendly lath and pencil, would make us think that there were two psychic forces present. ... It then rose, In all this, is there any proof that the directing agent was "the intelligence of the medium?" Is there not, on the contrary, every indication that the movements of the lath and pencil were directed by spirits "of the dead," or at least of those of some other unseen intelligent entities? Most certainly the word magnetism explains in this case as little as the term psychic force; howbeit, there is more reason to use the former than the latter, if it were but for the simple fact that the transcendent magnetism or mesmerism produces phenomena identical in effects with those of spiritualism. The phenomenon of the enchanted circle of Baron Du Potet and Regazzoni, is as contrary to the accepted laws of physiology as the rising of a table without contact is to the laws of natural philosophy. As strong men have often found it impossible to raise a small table weighing a few pounds, and broken it to pieces in the effort, so a dozen of experimenters, among them sometimes, academicians, were utterly unable to step across a chalk-line drawn on the floor by Du Potet. On one occasion a Russian general, well known for his skepticism, persisted until he fell on the ground in violent convulsions. In this case, the magnetic fluid which opposed such a resistance was Mr. Cox's psychic force, which endows the tables with an extraordinary and supernatural weight. If they produce the same psychological and physiological effects, there is good reason to believe them more or less identical. We do not think the deduction could be very reasonably objected to. Besides, were the fact even denied, this is no reason why it should not be so. Once upon a time, all the Academies in Christendom had agreed to deny that there were any mountains in the moon; and there was a certain time when, if any one had been so bold as to affirm that there was life in the superior regions of the atmosphere as well as in the fathomless depths of the ocean, he would have been set down as a fool or an ignoramus. "The Devil affirms-it must be a lie!" the pious Abbé Almiguana used to say, in a discussion with a "spiritualized table." We will soon be warranted in paraphrasing the sentence and making it read—“ Scientists deny then it must be true." A CHAPTER VII. "Thou great First Cause, least understood."-POPE. "Whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, This longing after immortality? Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror 'Tis the divinity that stirs within us; 'T is heaven itself that points out our hereafter And intimates eternity to man. ETERNITY! Thou pleasing, dreadful thought!”—Addison. "There is another and a better world."-KOTZEBUE: The Stranger. FTER according so much space to the conflicting opinions of cur men of science about certain occult phenomena of our modern period, it is but just that we give attention to the speculations of mediæval alchemists and certain other illustrious men. Almost without exception, ancient and mediæval scholars believed in the arcane doctrines of wisdom. These included Alchemy, the Chaldeo-Jewish Kabala, the esoteric systems of Pythagoras and the old Magi, and those of the later Platonic philosophers and theurgists. We also propose in subsequent pages to treat of the Indian gymnosophists and the Chaldean astrologers. We must not neglect to show the grand truths underlying the misunderstood religions of the past. The four elements of our fathers, earth, air, water, and fire, contain for the student of alchemy and ancient psychology or as it is now termed, magic-many things of which our philosophy has never dreamed. We must not forget that what is now called Necromancy by the Church, and Spiritualism by modern believers, and that includes the evoking of departed spirits, is a science which has, from remote antiquity, been almost universally diffused over the face of the globe. Although neither an alchemist, magician, nor astrologer, but simply a great philosopher, Henry More, of Cambridge University-a man universally esteemed, may be named as a shrewd logician, scientist, and metaphysician. His belief in witchcraft was firm throughout his life. His faith in immortality and able arguments in demonstration of the survival of man's spirit after death are all based on the Pythagorean system, adopted by Cardan, Van Helmont, and other mystics. The infinite and uncreated spirit that we usually call GOD, a substance cf the highest virtue and excellency, produced everything else by emanative causality. God thus is the primary substance, the rest, the secondary; if the former created matter with a power of moving itself, he, the primary substance, is still the cause of that motion as well as of the matter, and yet we rightly say that it is matter which moves itself. "We may define this kind of spirit we speak of to be a substance indiscernible, that can move itself, that can penetrate, contract, and dilate itself, and can also penetrate, move, and alter matter," "*which is the third emanation. He firmly believed in apparitions, and stoutly defended the theory of the individuality of every soul in which "personality, memory, and conscience will surely continue in the future state." He divided the astral spirit of man after its exit from the body into two distinct entities: the "aërial” and the "æthereal vehicle." During the time that a disembodied man moves in its aërial clothing, he is subject to Fate-i. e., evil and temptation, attached to its earthly interests, and therefore is not utterly pure; it is only when he casts off this garb of the first spheres and becomes ethereal that he becomes sure of his immortality. "For what shadow can that body cast that is a pure and transparent light, such as the ethereal vehicle is? And therefore that oracle is then fulfilled, when the soul has ascended into that condition we have already described, in which alone it is out of the reach of fate and mortality." He concludes his work by stating that this transcendent and divinely-pure condition was the only aim of the Pythagoreans. As to the skeptics of his age, his language is contemptuous and severe. Speaking of Scot, Adie, and Webster, he terms them "our new inspired saints sworn advocates of the witches, who thus madly and boldly, against all sense and reason, against all antiquity, all interpreters, and against the Scripture itself, will have even no Samuel in the scene, but a confederate knave! Whether the Scripture, or these inblown buffoons, puffed up with nothing but ignorance, vanity, and stupid infidelity, are to be believed, let any one judge," he adds. † What kind of language would this eminent divine have used against our skeptics of the nineteenth century? Descartes, although a worshipper of matter, was one of the most devoted teachers of the magnetic doctrine and, in a certain sense, even of Alchemy. His system of physics was very much like that of other great philosophers. Space, which is infinite, is composed, or rather filled up with a fluid and elementary matter, and is the sole fountain of all life. "Antidote," lib. i., cap. 4. "Letter to Glanvil, the author of 'Sadducismus Triumphatus,' May, 25, 1678.” THE NOSE CUT FROM A PORTER'S BACK. 207 enclosing all the celestial globes and keeping them in perpetual motion The magnet-streams of Mesmer are disguised by him into the Cartesian vortices, and both rest on the same principle. Ennemoser does not hesitate to say that both have more in common "than people suppose, who have not carefully examined the subject." * The esteemed philosopher, Pierre Poiret Naudé, was the warmest defender of the doctrines of occult magnetism and its first propounders, † in 1679. The magico-theosophical philosophy is fully vindicated in his works. The well-known Dr. Hufeland has written a work on magic † in which he propounds the theory of the universal magnetic sympathy between men, animals, plants, and even minerals. The testimony of Campanella, Van Helmont, and Servius, is confirmed by him in relation to the sympathy existing between the different parts of the body as well as between the parts of all organic and even inorganic bodies. Such also was the doctrine of Tenzel Wirdig. It may even be found expounded in his works, with far more clearness, logic, and vigor, than in those of other mystical authors who have treated of the same subject. In his famous treatise, The New Spiritual Medicine, he demonstrates, on the ground of the later-accepted fact of universal attraction and repulsion-now called "gravitation "-that the whole nature is ensouled. Wirdig calls this magnetic sympathy "the accordance of spirits." Everything is drawn to its like, and converges with natures congenial to itself. Out of this sympathy and antipathy arises a constant movement in the whole world, and in all its parts, and uninterrupted communion between heaven and earth, which produces universal harmony. Everything lives and perishes through magnetism; one thing affects another one, even at great distances, and its "congenitals" may be influenced to health and disease by the power of this sympathy, at any time, and notwithstanding the intervening space. § 'Hufeland," says Ennemoser, "gives the account of a nose which had been cut from the back of a porter, but which, when the porter died, died too and fell off from its artificial position. A piece of skin," adds Hufeland, " taken from a living head, had its hair turn gray at the same time as that on the head from which it was taken." || Kepler, the forerunner of Newton in many great truths, even in that of the universal "gravitation" which he very justly attributed to magnetic attraction, notwithstanding that he terms astrology "the insane daughter of a most wise mother"-Astronomy, shares the kabalistic belief * "History of Magic," vol. ii., p. 272. "Apologie pour tous les grands personnages faussement accusés de magie." "Nova Medicina Spirituum," 1675. "History of Magis," |