Such feats as the above are nothing in comparison to what is done by professed jugglers; “feats,” remarks the above-quoted author, “which might be regarded as simply inventions if told by one author only, but which seem to deserve prominent notice from being recounted by a series of authors, certainly independent of one another, and writing at long intervals of time and place. Our first witness is Ibn Batuta, and it will be necessary to quote him as well as the others in full, in order to show how closely their evidence tallies. The Arab traveller was present at a great entertainment at the court of the Viceroy of Khansa. “That same night a juggler, who was one of the Khan’s slaves, made his appearance, and the Amir said to him, ‘Come and show us some of your marvels.’ Upon this he took a wooden ball, with several holes in it, through which long thongs were passed, and laying hold of one of these, slung it into the air. It went so high that we lost sight of it altogether.... (We were in the middle of the palace-court.) There now remained only a little of the end of a thong in the conjurer’s hand, and he desired one of the boys who assisted him to lay hold of it and mount. He did so, climbing by the thong, and we lost sight of him also! The conjurer then called to him three times, but, getting no answer, he snatched up a knife as if in a great rage, laid hold of the thong, and disappeared also! By and bye, he threw down one of the boy’s hands, then a foot, then the other hand, and then the other foot, then the trunk, and last of all the head! Then he came down himself, puffing and panting, and with his clothes all bloody kissed the ground before the Amir, and said something to him in Chinese. The Amir gave some order in reply, and our friend then took the lad’s limbs, laid them together in their places, and gave a kick, when, presto! there was the boy, who got up and stood before us! All this astonished me beyond measure, and I had an attack of palpitation like that which overcame me once before in the presence of the Sultan of India, when he showed me something of the same kind. They gave me a cordial, however, which cured the attack. The Kaji Afkharuddin was next to me, and quoth he, ‘Wallah! ‘tis my opinion there has been neither going up nor coming down, neither marring, nor mending! ’Tis all hocus-pocus!’
And who doubts but that it is a “hocus-pocus,” an illusion, or Maya, as the Hindus express it? But when such an illusion can be forced on, say, ten thousand people at the same time, as we have seen it performed during a public festival, surely the means by which such an astounding hallucination can be produced merits the attention of science! When by such magic a man who stands before you, in a room, the doors of which you have closed and of which the keys are in your hand, suddenly disappears, vanishes like a flash of light, and you see him nowhere but hear his voice from different parts of the room addressing you and laughing at your perplexity, surely such an art is not unworthy either of Mr. Huxley or Dr. Carpenter. Is it not quite as well worth spending time over, as the lesser mystery—why barnyard cocks crow at midnight?
What Ibn Batuta, the Moor, saw in China about the year 1348, Colonel Yule shows Edward Melton, “an Anglo-Dutch traveller,” witnessing in Batavia about the year 1670: “One of the same gang” (of conjurers), says Melton,[712] “took a small ball of cord, and grasping one end of the cord in his hand slung the other up into the air with such force that its extremity was beyond reach of our sight. He then climbed up the cord with indescribable swiftness.... I stood full of astonishment, not conceiving where he had disappeared; when lo! a leg came tumbling down out of the air. A moment later a hand came down, etc.... In short, all the members of the body came successively tumbling from the air and were cast together by the attendant into the basket. The last fragment of all was the head, and no sooner had that touched the ground than he who had snatched up all the limbs and put them in the basket, turned them all out again topsy turvy. Then straightway we saw with these eyes all those limbs creep together again, and, in short, form a whole man, who at once could stand and go just as before without showing the least damage!... Never in my life was I so astonished ... and I doubted now no longer that these misguided men did it by the help of the Devil.”
In the memoirs of the Emperor Jahangire, the performances of seven jugglers from Bengal, who exhibited before him, are thus described: “Ninth. They produced a man whom they divided limb from limb, actually severing his head from the body. They scattered these mutilated members along the ground, and in this state they lay some time. They then extended a sheet over the spot, and one of the men putting himself under the sheet, in a few minutes came from below, followed by the individual supposed to have been cut into joints, in perfect health and condition.... Twenty-third. They produced a chain of fifty cubits in length, and in my presence threw one end of it toward the sky, where it remained as if fastened to something in the air. A dog was then brought forward and being placed at the lower end of the chain, immediately ran up, and reaching the other end, immediately disappeared in the air. In the same manner a hog, a panther, a lion, and a tiger were successively sent up the chain, and all equally disappeared at the upper end of the chain. At last they took down the chain, and put it into the bag, no one ever discovering in what way the different animals were made to vanish into the air in the mysterious manner above described.”[713]
We have in our possession a picture painted from such a Persian conjurer, with a man, or rather the various limbs of what was a minute before a man, scattered before him. We have seen such conjurers, and witnessed such performances more than once and in various places.
Bearing ever in mind that we repudiate the idea of a miracle and returning once more to phenomena more serious, we would now ask what logical objection can be urged against the claim that the reänimation of the dead was accomplished by many thaumaturgists? The fakir described in the Franco-Americain, might have gone far enough to say that this will-power of man is so tremendously potential that it can reänimate a body apparently dead, by drawing back the flitting soul that has not yet quite ruptured the thread that through life had bound the two together. Dozens of such fakirs have allowed themselves to be buried alive before thousands of witnesses, and weeks afterward have been resuscitated. And if fakirs have the secret of this artificial process, identical with, or analogous to, hibernation, why not allow that their ancestors, the Gymnosophists, and Apollonius of Tyana, who had studied with the latter in India, and Jesus, and other prophets and seers, who all knew more about the mysteries of life and death than any of our modern men of science, might have resuscitated dead men and women? And being quite familiar with that power—that mysterious something “that science cannot yet understand,” as Professor Le Conte confesses—knowing, moreover, “whence it came and whither it was going,” Elisha, Jesus, Paul, and Apollonius, enthusiastic ascetics and learned initiates, might have recalled to life with ease any man who “was not dead but sleeping,” and that without any miracle.
If the molecules of the cadaver are imbued with the physical and chemical forces of the living organism,[714] what is to prevent them from being set again in motion, provided we know the nature of the vital force, and who to command it? The materialist can certainly offer no objection, for with him it is no question of reïnfusing a soul. For him the soul has no existence, and the human body may be regarded simply as a vital engine—a locomotive which will start upon the application of heat and force, and stop when they are withdrawn. To the theologian the case offers greater difficulties, for, in his view, death cuts asunder the tie which binds soul and body, and the one can no more be returned into the other without miracle than the born infant can be compelled to resume its fœtal life after parturition and the severing of the umbilicus. But the Hermetic philosopher stands between these two irreconcilable antagonists, master of the situation. He knows the nature of the soul—a form composed of nervous fluid and atmospheric ether—and knows how the vital force can be made active or passive at will, so long as there is no final destruction of some necessary organ. The claims of Gaffarilus—which, by the bye, appeared so preposterous in 1650[715]—were later corroborated by science. He maintained that every object existing in nature, provided it was not artificial, when once burned still retained its form in the ashes, in which it remained till raised again. Du Chesne, an eminent chemist, assured himself of the fact. Kircher, Digby, and Vallemont have demonstrated that the forms of plants could be resuscitated from their ashes. At a meeting of naturalists in 1834, at Stuttgart, a receipt for producing such experiments was found in a work of Oetinger.[716] Ashes of burned plants contained in vials, when heated, exhibited again their various forms. “A small obscure cloud gradually rose in the vial, took a defined form, and presented to the eye the flower or plant the ashes consisted of.” “The earthly husk,” wrote Oetinger, “remains in the retort, while the volatile essence ascends, like a spirit, perfect in form, but void of substance.”[717]
And, if the astral form of even a plant when its body is dead still lingers in the ashes, will skeptics persist in saying that the soul of man, the inner ego, is after the death of the grosser form at once dissolved, and is no more? “At death,” says the philosopher, “the one body exudes from the other, by osmose and through the brain; it is held near its old garment by a double attraction, physical and spiritual, until the latter decomposes; and if the proper conditions are given the soul can reïnhabit it and resume the suspended life. It does it in sleep; it does it more thoroughly in trance; most surprisingly at the command and with the assistance of the Hermetic adept. Iamblichus declared that a person endowed with such resuscitating powers is ‘full of God.’ All the subordinate spirits of the upper spheres are at his command, for he is no longer a mortal, but himself a god. In his Epistle to the Corinthians, Paul remarks that ‘the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets.’”
Some persons have the natural and some the acquired power of withdrawing the inner from the outer body, at will, and causing it to perform long journeys, and be seen by those whom it visits. Numerous are the instances recorded by unimpeachable witnesses of the “doubles” of persons having been seen and conversed with, hundreds of miles from the places where the persons themselves were known to be. Hermotimus, if we may credit Pliny and Plutarch,[718] could at will fall into a trance and then his second soul proceeded to any distant place he chose.
The Abbé Fretheim, the famous author of Steganographie, who lived in the seventeenth century, could converse with his friends by the mere power of his will. “I can make my thoughts known to the initiated,” he wrote, “at a distance of many hundred miles, without word, writing, or cipher, by any messenger. The latter cannot betray me, for he knows nothing. If needs be, I can dispense with the messenger. If any correspondent should be buried in the deepest dungeon, I could still convey to him my thoughts as clearly and as frequently as I chose, and this quite simply, without superstition, without the aid of spirits.” Cordanus could also send his spirit, or any messages he chose. When he did so, he felt “as if a door was opened, and I myself immediately passed through it, leaving the body behind me.”[719] The case of a high German official, a counsellor Wesermann, was mentioned in a scientific paper.[720] He claimed to be able to cause any friend or acquaintance, at any distance, to dream of every subject he chose, or see any person he liked. His claims were proved good, and testified to on several occasions by skeptics and learned professional persons. He could also cause his double to appear wherever he liked; and be seen by several persons at one time. By whispering in their ears a sentence prepared and agreed upon beforehand by unbelievers, and for the purpose, his power to project the double was demonstrated beyond any cavil.