Section 12

It would indeed be beneath the dignity and honor of pages designed here to be represented should perversion of conditions or ambiguity be indulged. The inscriber, from the beginning of a literary career which now numbers six books, this being the seventh, has found accompanying the work a sense of strange association with an author who passed along in the year i8 — . This association has made its way into every volume; it will surely be found abundantly in this. It makes itself felt as a nature trying to drive out and take possession of the place of another nature. It is succeeding, and it is hoped will succeed until a new and superior life has taken the place of an old one.
The name of this author was written upon the face of paper concealed closely by an overhanging hand. The eye of the medium could not by any possibility have seen what was being put down, but instantaneously, synchronously, the man's hand, which had in it a pencil, flew with lightning rapidity over a page, repeating, but in reversed condition, the name inscribed. The table gave forth sound of powerful knocks throughout its whole circumference.
It was a first experience, and it was peculiarly in consonance with a state of mind. It seemed undoubtable relation with a double. Every fibre and impulse responded.
The medium himself was, or assumed to be, astonished. " Ask," he said, " ask anything. Get proof, get absolute proof, of spiritual
TRANSCENDENTAL PHYSICS. 125
relations while opportunity is by. Ask anything ; there is, I am sure, nothing that can be inquired which will not be answered." If the excitement of the man was assumed, he is to be credited with being a fine actor.
" There is an experience," it was replied, " known to no hu- man being but the speaker. It is an incident which has proved a perplexity to all investigations. It has an added strangeness in that one event connecting others of three weeks' duration is to be comprised in a single word. Let this double, which you say is now in you, write this word, and not to believe seems impos- sible."
There was not a second of hesitation. The pen preceded, if possible, the thought ; the word appeared on the face of a sheet lying before the medium.
The inditer is writing of the occasion as it was. The sudden appearance of the word exhilarated, intensified, overwhelmed him out of all ordinary worldly caution and prudence. He jumped from the chair and rushed into the next room, telling the wonder- ful thing to strangers, who listened with open eyes and ears, even if not all of them with entire credulity.
This, as remarked, was a first experience. To it is desired to have added and to have understood something before proceeding. The world is full of books, yet are nearly all players, after some fashion or other, at masquerade. Honesty, as to inwardness, is an exception. Writers do not open themselves, but keep a but- toned coat, so that what is beneath is not to be seen. If a man be impressionable, let him not conceal the virtue, for it is indeed of a virtue that an impressionable man is possessed ; neither is such a one to overlook that here lies definition of genius, and that with gifts rests responsibility. It is the impressionable man alone who is capable of seeing, hearing, and feeling things not recog- nizable by the masses. Music is through musicians, poetry is through poets, the spiritual is through the spiritual. There is a second matter, here personal, but not needing apology. The in- scriber of the present pages is now comparatively advanced in years, his ambitions are all outgrown, his estimates of men and judgments long ago made out ; prospective has centered in present II*
126 SPIRITUS SANCTUS.
and introspective. For thirty years a teacher, his own life, life- thoughts, and life-works mixed up with the lives, life-thoughts, and life-works of lonianism, Sophists, Platonists, Aristotelians, Stoics, Mystics, Scholastics, and Moderns ; discussing with young men questions philosophical and metaphysical, and considering with the old that most important of all things, — " ground of Certi- tude,"— he has come to esteem that he would like to place on paper something which, after a manner, shall be autobiographic of these experiences, relations, and work, and it is in such spirit that the pages here indited are penned. They are meant as a legacy to many well-remembered students ; are to be an old friend trans- ported into new quarters ; are to keep in mind the class-room, and to tell of things happening and that have happened since the separation. Best of all, perhaps, the friend here found is in the fashion of a book which will keep quiet, or repeat the old, or in- vite to new experiences, as may be found most agreeable.
To come back to the experiences : great excitement is no help to clear thinking. The night of the return from the interview with the medium was spent in a state of restlessness that entirely banished sleep. Convincing proof seemed to have been afforded of relation M'ith a dematerialized personality. Was it possible to deny the singular and peculiarly special proof afforded ? Next day at noon a private visit was made to the medium. The result of the interview was an increase of the mysterious. Scarcely a word had been spoken, the ordinary salutation of "good-morning" not unlikely, when the medium lifted from the table a clean slate, and, holding this for a single moment beneath the table, handed it to his visitor covered with writing, to which was affixed the signature in full of a close relative whose body had been buried in a village graveyard of a neighboring State thirty years before. This accomplished, the slate filled and refilled itself with mes- sages from the source of the preceding evening ; some of these being replies to queries, others of common and unimportant sig- nification.
The writer is here to remark a strong impression made by the medium as to honesty and religiousness of nature and purpose, and this seemed warranted in an interview occur 'ing two days later,
TRANSCENDENTAL PHYSICS.
127
where writing was done on the slate to the effect that the manner of relation being employed was of crude import quite unworthy of an intercourse capable of being enjoyed, and that hereafter the instrument need not be employed as a go-between. It requires to be added that at each visit compensation for the time of the medium had been made by placing a fee upon his table.
The present experiences are entitled "Transcendental Physics" for the reason that they deal with acts accomplished after occult manner. An exception to such physical signification is just here to be recorded, and with it ends relation with the present medium. He had " made up his mind," the man said, *' to study medicine, and, being of very limited means, would like to offer in exchange for advantages he trusted to gain by atten- dance on certain of the writer's clinical lectures whatever of profit might lie with looking into the subject of his gift in the direction of mediumship.
" Treating you as an honorable man," it was replied, " who introduces a subject, which, after the aspect in which it is pre- sented, is new and impressive, it is to be asked if you yourself are unconscious as far as explanation of this writing is concerned ?"
" Entirely so," he replied.
A bargain of mutual service was agreed on, and that same evening found the bargainers closeted in the museum of a hos- pital, where the surgical studies were to be pursued. Six meet- ings were held, to each of which the writer brought his own slate, the medium being allowed to lift and to put it under the table and in drawers or wheresoever it pleased him, but the six meetings passed without so much as a line or a letter appearing. There was re- turn of the primary phase, however. The man would write quickly upon a sheet answers to queries, concerning things of which it seemed quite impossible he could have knowledge. It was asked, to afford a few examples : " In what year did W. depart?" The answer written was correct, the name of the month being added. " Whereabouts in Europe is E. now living ?" The answer, " Paris," was right. " What is the name of a friend now in mind, and where was his last place of residence ?" The reply, equally correct with the preceding, was, " Mr. S., Wilmington, Delaware."
128 SPIRITUS SANCTUS.
Familiarity v/ith, or even the single repetition of, an experience diminishes vividness as to impression made. On this occas-ion the doctorly characteristic of accepting or rejecting nothing with- out investigation strongly reasserted itself. What the doctor did was to light what he calls his " Familiar," a meerschaum kept for duty in the dissecting-room, and to cogitate over the matter as the smoke rolled in rings toward the ceiling. " This double," it was finally said, " was nursed in his last sickness by the barkeeper of a certain hostelry in a certain far-off town. Will he name the house and the man?" There was no response. The name of the house had gone temporarily from the questioner's memory ; that of the barkeeper he had never known. The medium sat op- posite ; his head rested upon his hand ; his eyes turned hither and thither as if expecting to get sight of something. Quite an hour passed, during which infrequent knocks were heard, but no at- tempt made to answer the questions. Suddenly, after this lapse of time, the name of the house came back to the questioner's mind. Almost instantly the medium commenced to spell " M-i-d- d-1-e-s-e-x." It was the word. " Try now the name of the nurse," it was asked. The medium gazed intently into the eyes of the speaker, but his tongue found nothing to tell.
There was here in the difference a revelation, but a revelation solely out of the observer's consciousness. The medium had never as yet told anything but what was already known. It was the manner of telling which had startled and confounded. Rela- tion was of a character not beyond explanation by physiology. Suspicion instantly made a thrust at credulity.
" It is even as seen and has been told," said the medium, rising and taking up his hat. «* What you are to know is to be through yourself. We have no occasion to meet any more." And we did not meet any more.
. . . Credulity was thrust out, not killed ; not even particularly disabled. It was not writing upon a slate that was an over- whelming wonder. But where, or what, was the art, science, sense, or thing of occult signification which seemed to know all about unspoken secrets ?
TRANSCENDENTAL PHYSICS. 129
Passage is here made to the mediumship of the gentlen an and student, member and worker of and with the Seybert commission, whose initial introduces the pages ; and as now direct part comes to be taken by the writer, the personal pronoun will be employed.
" We will unravel or lose ourselves in these mysteries," I said. The conversation introducing this remark followed the experience recorded ; as many as three years, however, having elapsed.
** I will entreat the spirits," he answered, " in the line of tran- scendental physics."
"And I," was my reply, "will court and invite the psychic." I might readily promise this last, as at the time I was knowing to and had myself become a seer of — of what ?
It was fully a year after the compact, — a year which had seemed to change my friend into an alchemist, and which certainly had grown a feature of concern into his open countenance, otherwise such a feature was assumed, — when a note was received asking a meeting at his house with several gentlemen, who, like ourselves, were interested in occult investigations.
It was not entertainment for idle hours that brought this com- pany together. All had become familiar with mysterious mani- festations. All were knowing to claims made in high and in low places concerning the new faith. Bible and tradition were become obsolete with many. Certainty was inferred to have taken the place of hypothetical and fallacious. Eyes now saw for them- selves. Ears now heard for themselves. Touch now touched and measured for itself. Revelation had descended to association with common sense. To deny or to doubt the new faith was to doubt that one had seen, heard, and felt what only to-day or yesterday had been seen, heard, or felt.
The time of a first meeting was the night of March 13, 18 — ; the place, a house situated on a prominent street in the heart of the great city of Philadelphia ; the room, not hid, as in the days of alembics, in a garret or cellar, but being a great oblong square, brilliantly lit by a modern chandelier. Everything bore the stamp of beauty and freshness, the host alone excepted ; he carried him- self as one wearied and distrait and anxious for an occasion to be t^.
I^o SPIRITUS SANCTUS.
What occurred at this meeting was written out two days later by urgent request of the confrire, an urgency not at all compre- hended at the time, but which later showed agreement with the Aristotelian aphorism that " common sense is little better than no sense at all," — an aphorism brought quickly enough to the under- standing of students of occult matters.
Inviting his audience to seats at one end of the room, the ccn- frire placed a chair at the other end, in which chair the writer was invited to be seated. Now were handed him a slip of paper, a lead-pencil, and a book, the last to serve as a support while using the knee as a stand. Upon the paper a question was to be written. The confrere retired to the other end of the room to afford opportunity for the writing to be done without possible oversight by him. Advantage was taken of this absence to note upon the paper the question " What is evolution?" The paper was instantly folded, the writing being within. The writer was directed to enclose the slip in four envelopes of increased sizes. Into the first \f as placed the question, and the envelope sealed. This was put into a second, the second into a third, the third into the last. On each were written the initials of the writer. The whole was then placed into the inside breast-pocket of a coat worn by the writer, and this was closely buttoned and kept so during the whole evening. Dr. W. did not touch the paper after the writer had taken it into his hand. A second question was written at the same time and under exactly similar circumstances by another of the persons present, a like disposition being made of it.
There was now handed to the writer by the confrere a hinged slate, with the request that examination be made with a view to seeing whether it be other than it seemed. Such examination was made by three or four of the gentlemen present, no discovery following. This being settled, the writer was furnished with a screw and screw-driver, by means of which the slates were re- lated and a sticker placed over the screw-head. The slates were next enclosed in a sealed envelope by the writer, and kept care- fully under direct observation, — that is, they lay upon the holder's lap, immediately beneath his eyes, and with sixteen other pairs of
TRANSCENDENTAL PHYSICS. i^j
eyes bent all the time upon the enclosure. The light of three gas-jets illuminated the proceedings.
Now were handed the gentleman referred to, and also to the writer, second slips of paper, with request for repetition of the questions. Such repetition being written by each, Dr. W. put into their hands common cylindrical wooden boxes of not greater diameter than an ordinary lead-pencil, entrance to which was by means of a lid connecting itself with the body cork fashion, into which boxes, after closest examination as to false bottom, sides, etc., the papers were placed by the writers, the tops of the cylin- ders being put into place, and the boxes as to circumference, in- cluding the relation of the lid with the body, enclosed and fastened by mucilage-covered paper. The boxes were of plain wood, such as hold the cheaper kind of hair-pins.
Next there was handed to the writer an empty box, made of mahogany. Close scrutiny showed nothing different from an ordinary case of its general kind. The lid was related to the body by common brass hinges ; there was a lock and there was a ringed handle for convenience in carrying. In this box the wooden tubes containing their enclosures, which, up to this mo- ment, had not left the writer's hands, were placed and the lid closed. Next a key was furnished the writer, who, after locking the box, placed the key in his pocket. Succeeding this seals were used by the writer, the keyhole being covered and the body and lid conjoined by gum stickers. Upon the seal covering the key- hole the initials of the sealer were peculiarly written.
At this stage a third box, made of common pasteboard, was brought to the table, and into it was dropped the mahogany box just spoken of, an immediately succeeding performance being the enveloping in paper of this wooden box, together with a careful cording of it with twine.
Now was brought still another box, this of paper. Into it was placed the nest, made by the three boxes just described, together with four handkerchiefs furnished from the pockets of gentlemen standing around. This box was also wrapped and tied up in paper. Succeeding, an empty wooden box was brought to the table, which, after being examined, was locked, sealed, and wrapped