Editor's Table.
Science, it has been said, is essentially unpoetical. It must be acknowledged, nevertheless, that it not unfrequently furnishes some of our choicest similes. Homer had, indeed, long ago compared thought to the lightning; but how much more definite, and, on this account, more effective, is the kindred simile drawn from the discovery of the modern electric telegraph. And yet, is there not here something more than simile? Is not the communication from soul to soul literally, as well as figuratively tele-graphic, that is, far-writing, or writing from afar? We hope to interest our readers by a brief examination of the query we have started.
An identity might, perhaps, be shown in the very medium of communication, so far as the process has a material medium. There is no difficulty, and no danger, in admitting that the electric fluid may be the agent in the cerebral and organic transmission, as well as in the galvanic battery. But it is mainly in the process itself that we may trace the striking correspondence between the two modes of intelligence. The primary element of all thought is a spiritual emotion. The end of all communication, mediate or immediate, is to produce the same emotion or feeling in another soul. To this every other step is subordinate. Even thought is not so much an end, in itself, as is the spiritual feeling, or exercise of soul corresponding to it. This spiritual emotion, then, must first be brought under the form of a conception, or an objective picture, without which it can not be distinctly read and understood, even by the soul in which it first exists, much less communicated to another. So far the process is strikingly the same with that adopted in the telegraphic dispatch. The soul, by its own spiritual energy, first turns the emotion or feeling into a thought. It translates the thought from the abstract to the concrete, from the intuitional to the conceptive. It brings it down into the soul's chamber of imagery, and imprints it on the brain. In other words, the message is reduced to writing and given to the clerk at the station-house, who translates it into telegraphic signals. The more immediate transmitting power is now set in operation. An influence is imparted from the brain to the nerves (or wires) of the vocal organs. It is continued to the lungs, and sets in motion a current of air. This impinges on the outward atmosphere, and is carried on through successive undulations until it reaches the other station for which it was designed. It enters the office-chamber of the ear, communicates with the other cerebral battery, and then writes off from the auditory nerve or wire, the signals which, by the other logical and linguistic faculty, or the clerk at the second station, are translated into the pictorial symbols understood by all, and thus written on the second brain. The spiritual inhabitant to whom it is directed, again translates it, in a reverse order, from the verbal to the conceptive, from the conceptive to the emotional—the intuition is spiritually seen—the emotion is felt—and thus the circuit is completed.
This is substantially the process every time we hold intercourse by means of speech. The operation is ever imperfect in all, and more imperfect in some than in others. We make mistakes in translating our own intuitions and emotions. We make still greater mistakes in taking off from the wires, and in re-translating the conceptual language which brings to us the feelings and intuitions of others. But there is no other way. The author of our spiritual and material constitution hath literally shut us up to this, and we can not get out of the limits within which He has confined our intercourse with other spirits. Clairvoyance boasts of having broken through them, or over them; but clairvoyance is yet a fact to be established. Even, too, if it has any claims upon our belief, it will doubtless be found, in the end, to be only a stenographic shortening of some of the steps, without being, in reality, any more an immediate action of mind upon mind than the ordinary process.
Spirit can only communicate with spirit through outward symbols, and by more or less steps, all of which may be regarded as outward to the most interior effect. By long familiarity this circuitous chain assumes to us the appearance of directness. But in truth we never see each other; we never hear each other; if by the terms be meant our very self—our very spiritual form, our very spiritual voice. Even to our human soul may be accommodated without irreverence the language which Paul applies to the Deity. Even of us it may be said, although in a far lower sense, "Our invisible things are only understood by the things that are done," even our temporal power and humanity. Each soul is shut up in an isolation as perfect, in one sense, as that which separates the far distant worlds in the universe. Had there been round each one of us a wall of adamant a thousand feet in thickness, with only the smallest capillary apertures through which to carry the wires of telegraphic signals, we could not, as to the essential action of the spirit, be more secluded than we are at present. We say the essential, or first action of the soul—for doubtless there may be various degrees of difficulty or facility in the modes of mediate communication. But in this more spiritual sense each one of us exists by himself. We live apart in utter loneliness. The seclusion of each spirit knows no infraction. Its perfect solitude has never been invaded by any foreign intrusion.
To one who deeply reflects on the fact to which we have been calling attention, the first feeling, and a just feeling too, might be one of pride. The dignity of our nature would seem enhanced by such a constitution. Each man's "mind is his kingdom," in which he may be as autocratic as he wills. It makes even the lowest in the scale of humanity such an absolute sovereign within his own spiritual boundaries, so perfectly secure, if he please, against all foreign intervention. It sets in so striking a light what in its physical and etymological, rather than its moral sense, may be styled the holiness—the wholeness, hale-ness, or separate integrity of each man's essential being. It is in this point of view, too, that to every hale mind the pretensions of clairvoyance must appear so inexpressibly revolting. We allude to its assumption of having the power of committing what, for the want of a better name, we can only characterize as spiritual burglary—in other words, of breaking into our spiritual house, and taking its seat in the very shrine of the interior consciousness. What can be more degrading to our human nature than to admit that any other human power, or human will, can at any time, and from any motive, even for purposes of the most frivolous amusement, actually enter this inner sanctuary, turning the immortal spirit into a paltry show-house, and rudely invading, or pretending to invade, the soul's essential glory, its sacred and unapproachable individuality?
There is, however, another aspect of the thought in which it may give rise to a very different, if not an opposite emotion. There may be, too, at times, a feeling of the deepest melancholy called out by that other consideration of our spiritual solitude, of our being so utterly alone upon the earth—a feeling which has never been set forth with so much power and, at the same time, truthful simplicity, as in the touching language of inspiration—"The heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger meddleth not with its joy." And then, again, although we would in general shrink from it as a painful ordeal, there are periods when we long for a more searching communion with other spirits than can ever be expected from the most intimate methods of mediate intercourse. There are periods when we are irresistibly drawn out to say—O that some other soul were acquainted with us as we think we are acquainted with ourselves, not only with our fancied virtues and our mere real sins, as they appear imperfectly manifested by misinterpreted signals from within, but with our very soul itself. Yes, there is sadness in the thought that we are so unknown, even to those who would be thought to know us best—unknown alike in that which makes us better as in that which makes us worse than we seem;—for we are all better, and we are all worse than we appear to our fellow-men.
And here, we think, may be found an argument for the existence of Deity, built on stronger and more assuring ground than is furnished by any of the ordinary positions of natural theology. It is an argument derived from one of the most interior wants of our moral constitution. There is no doubt that in our fallen state a feeling of pain—at times of intense pain—may connect itself in our minds with the recognition of the Divine idea; but there is also an element of happiness, and, if cherished, of the highest and most serious happiness, in the thought that there is One Great Soul that does penetrate into our most interior spirituality. There is one Soul that is ever as intimately present with us as our own consciousness—that holds communion with us, and with whom we may hold communion, in a manner impossible for any other. There is One that thinks our thoughts, and feels our feelings, even as we think them, and as we feel them, although, along with this, in another manner, too, of its own, that transcends our thinking "even as the heavens are high above the earth," and is as far removed from all the imperfections of our own spiritual exercises. There may seem an inconsistency in this apparent mingling of the finite and the infinite in the Divine Nature, but it is the belief of both which unlocks for us the meaning of the Scriptures, and sheds light over every page of revelation and of providence. There is a higher Soul that pervades our spiritual entity, not as an impersonal or pantheistic abstraction, but as the most distinctly personal of all personalities—not as a mere Law of nature, but as a Father "who careth for us," as a Guardian "who numbereth the very hairs of our heads," as a Judge who taketh note of every thought, and gives importance to all our forgotten sins, while He is, at the same time, present with, and caring for every other individual soul in the universe. As in some previous musings of our Editorial Table, we might have adverted to the Divine physical power as the ever-present dynamical entity in the seeming vacuities of space, and binding together the isolated material worlds, so here we may regard the Higher Spiritual Presence as the true bond of union among all those isolated souls that fill the spiritual universe. Thus viewed, the fact of such communion would be the highest truth in philosophy, as a belief in the reality of its possible consciousness would be the highest article of faith.