A casual reader might be misled by occasional cleverness of expression into thinking the book less serious than it is. Perhaps that accounts in part for Lafcadio Hearn’s calling it supercilious. Percival himself says, in the first paragraph of the chapter on Miracles: “It is quite possible to see the comic side of things without losing sight of their serious aspect. In fact, not to see both sides is to get but a superficial view of life, missing its substance. So much for the people. As for the priests, it is only necessary to say that few are more essentially sincere and lovable than the Shintō ones; and few religions in a sense more true. With this preface for life-preserver I plunge boldly into the miracles.” In fact, expressions that appear less serious than the subject merits are few, and the descriptions, of the trances for example, are almost strangely appreciative, and for a scientific study keenly sympathetic and beautiful.
The book opens with an account of the trances of the three young men on Mount Ontake, for that sight was the source of all these researches. He next lays a foundation for the study of the subject by a short history of the Japanese religions; how Shinto, the old cult, with its myriad divinities and simple rites, was for a time overshadowed by Buddhism, to be restored with the power of the Mikado; and how with its revival the popularity of the trances returned. They had been kept alive by a single Buddhist sect which had adopted them, but now they are even more widely practised by two out of the ten Shinto sects, their sacred site being Ontake. But before taking up the trances he describes the lesser, and better known, cases of miraculous intervention for protection from injury and for sanctification; notably, being sprinkled with boiling water, walking over a bed of hot coals, and up and down a ladder of sword blades; and he discusses why no injury occurs. The walking over hot coals, at least, was even performed in his own garden; and, although he does not say so in the book, he did it himself, without, however, complete immunity to the soles of his feet.
After telling of what he terms objective, as distinguished from subjective, miracles, such as bringing down fire from heaven; and saying something of miraculous healing of disease, he comes to the main subject of the book, the incarnations or trances. First he speaks of the preparation for them, washing and fasting which are arduous and long, the purification of persons and places, and a series of ceremonies which, he says, tend to promote vacuity of mind. All these things are absolutely sincere, for he declares that the first view of a trance dispels any idea of sham. He then describes three typical trances: first Ryobu, a Shinto-Buddhist sect, where one of the men possessed, on coming back to himself, was disappointed that he had not spoken English, which he did not know himself; for to his mind it was not he that spoke but the god who entered into him. The second example was a Buddhist trance with the full complement of eight persons filling their several offices in the ceremony. This description is especially striking and sympathetic. The third case is of a pure Shinto trance, much the same, but with the simpler ceremonial of that cult. He describes also the Kwanchō’s training school, which has already been referred to as the Kindergarten. He notes the pulse, insensibility, the other physical conditions and sensations of the possessed, the sex and number of the gods who enter him, for the exorcist has no power to invoke the spirit he would prefer, but simply calls for a god, and when one comes inquires who it is. It may be a god or a goddess, and several of them may come in succession. The main object of the proceeding being to obtain counsel or prophecy, the exorcist, and he alone, can ask questions of him, but he can do so on behalf of anyone else, and often did so for Percival about his own affairs, although the prophecies appear never to have turned out right.
A chapter is devoted to pilgrimages and the pilgrim clubs, which included in the aggregate vast numbers of people, only a minute part of whom, however, belonged to the trance sects. They subscribed small sums to be used to send each year a few of their members to the shrine or sacred mountain with which the club is associated; this feature of the religious organization being as important from a social as a religious point of view. Another chapter is given to the Gohei, or sacred cluster of paper strips, used for all spiritual purposes, and essential in calling down any god; an emblem which he compares with the crucifix, while pointing out the difference in their use. This first part of the book ends with an argument, apparently to one who knows nothing about the matter conclusive, that the whole subject of these trances is of Shinto not Buddhist origin; and in this connection he tells of his visit to the shrines of Ise where a temple was built to the sun-goddess when she possessed people, as she has long ceased to do at these shrines.
So far the book is scientific; that is, it consists of a description and analysis of phenomena repeatedly observed and carefully tested. The second part, which he calls Noumena, is an explanation of them on general psychological principles, and thus belongs rather to philosophy than science. It comprises discussions of the essence of self, of the freedom of the will, of the motive forces of ideas, of individuality, of dreams, hypnotism and trances. In these matters he was much influenced by the recently published “Psychology” of William James, which he had with him, and he draws comparisons with hypnotism, a more prominent subject then than it is now. Bearing in mind his dominant thought about the essential quality of the Japanese, it is not unnatural that he should find in the greater frequency of such phenomena among them than elsewhere a confirmation of his theory of their comparative lack of personality.
Perhaps his own estimate of the relative value of the two parts of the book and that of critics might not agree; but, however that may be, the second part is penetrating, and the work as a whole a remarkable study of a subject up to that time practically wholly concealed from the many observers of Japanese life and customs. It was, in fact, his farewell to Japan, for, leaving in the fall of 1893, he never again visited that land. Ten years its people had been his chief intellectual interest, but perhaps he thought he had exhausted the vein in which he had been at work, or another interest may have dislodged it. He has left no statement of why he gave up Japan for astronomy, but probably there is truth in both of these conjectures.
Talking later to George Agassiz, Percival attributed the change to the fact that Schiaparelli, who had first observed the fine lines on the planet Mars which he called “canali,” found that his failing eyesight prevented his pursuing his observations farther, and that he had determined to carry them on. That may well have directed his attention to the particular planet; but the interest in astronomy lay far deeper, extending back to the little telescope of boyhood on the roof of his father’s house at Brookline. We have seen that his Commencement Part at graduation was on the nebular hypothesis, and he never lost his early love of such things. In July, 1891, he writes to his brother-in-law, William L. Putnam, about a project for writing on what he calls the philosophy of the cosmos, with illustrations from celestial mechanics. That was just before he went to Ontake and there became involved in the study of trances, “which,” as he says in his next letter to the same, “adds another to my budget of literary eventualities.” In fact, the trances occupied most of his time for the next two years, without banishing the thought of later taking up other things, or effacing the lure of astronomy, for in 1892 he took with him to Japan a six-inch telescope, no small encumbrance unless really desired, and he writes of observing Saturn therewith. Whatever may have been the reason, it seems probable from the rapidity with which he threw himself into astronomy and into its planetary branch, that at least he had something of the kind in his mind before he returned from Japan in the autumn of 1893.
CHAPTER IX
THE OBSERVATORY AT FLAGSTAFF
When, returning from Japan late in 1893, Percival Lowell found himself quickly absorbed by astronomical research, he was by no means without immediate equipment for the task. His mathematical capacity, that in college had so impressed Professor Benjamin Peirce, had not been allowed to rust away; for, when at home, he had kept it bright in the Mathematical and Physical (commonly called the M. P.) Club, a group of men interested in the subject, mainly from Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. So fresh was it that we find him using, at the outset, with apparent ease his calculus—both differential and integral—tools that have a habit of losing edge with disuse. Physically, also, he had a qualification of great importance for the special work he was to undertake,—that of perceiving on the disks of the planets, very fine markings close to the limit of visibility; for the late Dr. Hasket Derby, then the leading practitioner in Ophthalmology in Boston, told Professor Julian Coolidge that Percival’s eyesight was the keenest he had ever examined.
One essential remained, to find the best atmosphere for his purpose. In entering our air the rays of light from the stars are deflected, that is bent, and bent again when they strike a denser or less dense stratum. But these strata are continually changing with currents of warmer or colder air rising and falling above the surface of the earth, and hence the rays of light are being shifted a little from side to side as they reach us. Everyone is familiar with the twinkling of the stars, caused in this way; for before entering our atmosphere their light is perfectly steady. Moreover, everyone must have observed that the amount of twinkling varies greatly. At times it is unusually intense, and at others the stars seem wonderfully still. Now, although the planets, being near enough to show a disk visible through a telescope, do not seem to twinkle, the same thing in fact occurs. The light is deflected, and the shaking makes it very difficult to see the smaller markings. Imagine trying to make out the detail on an elaborately decorated plate held up by a man with a palsied hand. The plate would be seen easily, but for the detail one would wish it held in a steadier grasp, and for observing the planets this corresponds to a steadier atmosphere.