Left to itself, this life-principle will blindly follow the laws of nature; and, according to conditions, will produce health and an exuberance of life, or cause death and dissolution. But, guided by the will of the adept, it becomes obedient; its currents restore the equilibrium in organic bodies, they fill the waste, and produce physical and psychological miracles, well-known to mesmerizers. Infused in inorganic and inert matter, they create an appearance of life, hence motion. If to that life an individual intelligence, a personality, is wanting, then the operator must either send his scin-lecca, his own astral spirit, to animate it; or use his power over the region of nature-spirits to force one of them to infuse his entity into the marble, wood, or metal; or, again, be helped by human spirits. But the latter—except the vicious, earth-bound class[912]—will not infuse their essence into these inanimate objects. They leave the lower kinds to produce the similitude of life and animation, and only send their influence through the intervening spheres like a ray of divine light, when the so-called “miracle” is required for a good purpose. The condition—and this is a law in spiritual nature—is purity of motive, purity of the surrounding magnetic atmosphere, personal purity of the operator. Thus is it, that a Pagan “miracle” may be by far holier than a Christian one.
Who that has seen the performance of the fakirs of Southern India, can doubt the existence of theopœa in ancient times? An inveterate skeptic, though more than anxious to attribute every phenomenon to jugglery, still finds himself compelled to testify to facts; and facts that are to be witnessed daily if one chooses. “I dare not,” he says, speaking of Chibh-Chondor, a fakir of Jaffna-patnam, “describe all the exercises which he performed. There are things one dares not say even after having witnessed them, for fear of being charged with having been under an inexplicable hallucination! And yet, ten, nay, twenty times, I saw and saw again the fakir obtain similar results over inert matter.... It was but child’s play for our ‘charmer’ to make the flame of candles which had, by his directions, been placed in the remotest corners of the apartment, pale and become extinguished at will; to cause the furniture to move, even the sofas on which we sat, the doors to open and shut repeatedly: and all this without quitting the mat upon which he sat on the floor.
“Perhaps I will be told that I saw imperfectly. Possibly; but I will say that hundreds and thousands of persons have seen and do see what I have, and things more wonderful; has one of all these discovered the secret, or been able to duplicate these phenomena? And I can never repeat too often that all this does not occur on a stage, supplied with mechanical contrivances for the use of the operator. No, it is a beggar crouched, naked, on the floor, who thus sports with your intelligence, your senses, and all that which we have agreed among ourselves to style the immutable laws of nature, but which he appears to alter at will!
“Does he change its course? ‘No, but he makes it act by using forces which are yet unknown to us,’ say the believers. However that may be, I have found myself twenty times at similar performances in company with the most distinguished men of British India—professors, physicians, officers. Not one of them but thus summarized his impressions upon quitting the drawing-room. ‘This is something terrifying to human intelligence!’ Every time that I saw repeated by a fakir the experiment of reducing serpents to a cataleptic state, a condition in which these animals have all the rigidity of the dry branch of a tree, my thoughts have reverted to the biblical fable (?) which endows Moses and the priests of Pharaoh with the like power.”[913]
Assuredly, the flesh of man, beast, and bird should be as easily endowed with magnetic life-principle as the inert table of a modern medium. Either both wonders are possible and true, or both must fall to the ground, together with the miracles of Apostolic days, and those of the more modern Popish Church. As for vital proofs furnished to us in favor of such possibilities, we might name books enough to fill a whole library. If Sixtus V. cited a formidable array of spirits attached to various talismans, was not his threat of excommunication for all those who practiced the art, uttered merely because he would have the knowledge of this secret confined within the precincts of the Church? How would it do for his “divine” miracles to be studied and successfully reproduced by every man endowed with perseverance, a strong positive magnetic power, and an unflinching will? Recent events at Lourdes (of course, supposing them to have been truthfully reported) prove that the secret is not wholly lost; and if there is no strong magician-mesmerizer concealed under frock and surplice, then the statue of Notre-Dame is moved by the same forces which move every magnetized table at a spiritual seance; and the nature of these “intelligences,” whether they belong to the classes of human, human elementary, or elemental spirits depends on a variety of conditions. With one who knows anything of mesmerism, and at the same time of the charitable spirit of the Roman Catholic Church, it ought not to be difficult to comprehend that the incessant curses of the priests and monks; and the bitter anathemas so freely pronounced by Pius IX.—himself a strong mesmerizer, and believed to be a jetattore (evil eye)—have drawn together legions of elementaries and elementals under the leadership of the disembodied Torquemadas. These are the “angels” who play pranks with the statue of the Queen of Heaven. Any one who accepts the “miracle” and thinks otherwise blasphemes.
Although it would seem as if we had already furnished sufficient proofs that modern science has little or no reason to boast of originality, yet before closing this volume we will adduce a few more to place the matter beyond doubt. We have but to recapitulate, as briefly as possible, the several claims to new philosophies and discoveries, the announcement of which has made the world open its eyes so wide within these last two centuries. We have pointed to the achievements in arts, sciences, and philosophy of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Chaldeans, and Assyrians; we will now quote from an author who has passed long years in India studying their philosophy. In the famous and recent work of Christna et le Christ, we find the following tabulation:
“Philosophy.—The ancient Hindus have created from the foundation the two systems of spiritualism and materialism, of metaphysical philosophy and of positive philosophy. The first taught in the Vedantic school, whose founder was Vyasa; the second taught in the Sankya school, whose founder was Kapila.
“Astronomical Science.—They fixed the calendar, invented the zodiac, calculated the precession of the equinoxes, discovered the general laws of the movements, observed and predicted the eclipses.
“Mathematics.—They invented the decimal system, algebra, the differential, integral, and infinitesimal calculi. They also discovered geometry and trigonometry, and in these two sciences they constructed and proved theorems which were only discovered in Europe as late as the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was the Brahmans in fact who first deduced the superficial measure of a triangle from the calculation of its three sides, and calculated the relations of the circumference to the diameter. Furthermore, we must restore to them the square of the hypotenuse and the table so improperly called Pythagorean, which we find engraved on the gôparama of the majority of great pagodas.
“Physics.—They established the principle which is still our own to-day, that the universe is a harmonious whole, subject to laws which may be determined by observation and experiment. They discovered hydrostatics; and the famous proposition that every body plunged in water loses of its own weight a weight equal to the volume which it displaces, is only a loan made by the Brahmans to the famous Greek architect, Archimedes. The physicists of the pagodas calculated the velocity of light, fixed in a positive manner the laws which it follows in its reflection. And finally, it is beyond doubt, from the calculations of Surya-Sidhenta, that they knew and calculated the force of steam.