Of twenty-one cases of death registered on the sea coast of Long Island at Orient, by Capt. D. B. Edwards, I find, by careful examination, that with only one exception, the aged, or those who had been suffering from long sickness, died at the ebb of the tide. Those cases were taken as they came, and afford an average that may be depended upon.
Not that the coming and going of the ocean wave as it rolls round the world has special influence. The cause is more profound, and blended with the force of gravitation. Not only is the ocean agitated and piled up beneath the moon; the deeper and more elastic aerial sea is more strongly fluctuated, and the electric and magnetic conditions change with certain periodicity. The maximum of positive force is attained at high tide, constantly increasing as the tide comes in, and then recedes to the zero of negativeness with its outgoing. With the flood of water, and higher pressure of atmosphere, the forces of life are stimulated by the increasing positiveness. When these stimulants withdraw, the tide runs to the negative pole, and a soul ebbs from the mortal shore. Man is sensitive to the influences of the sun and moon, and to the stars.
The influence of the moon in cases of lunacy has been observed from ancient times, and a lunar month measures the cycle of changes in most cases of madness.
During health these subtle changes are not felt, or too feebly to be remarked. It is during sickness, when the physical energies are so enfeebled that slight forces turn the balance for or against, that the most palpable effects are produced. There are moon-tides and sun-tides in the ocean and in the air. Sometimes these augment, at others depress each other. The magnetic disturbances are much greater at times than others; hence the subject is complicated; but when investigated it will be shown that there is co-operation between vital force and the energies of nature.
A spirit is a harp attuned to respond to the touch of myriad forces. It is placed in the center of these multitudinous energies, coming in from every direction. It is sensitive to the touch of the sun, the moon and the planets, and to that of the farthest star that twinkles on the verge of the Milky Way; not in the sense of astrology, but in as faithful a manner. If the magnetic needle trembles because of a spot in the sun; if the magnetic currents of the earth are disturbed by activity of the solar disc, can we for a moment doubt but the more delicately ethereal spiritual perception will feel such disturbances? The sweet influence of the Pleiades has more than poetic meaning, and the cold light of the moon brings on its beams the breath of love.
It is well known that many diseases are aggravated by the approach of night, while others are most severe during the day. All nervous pains become intensified at the approach of night—a fact admitted, but referred by material science to the imagination, the fancy having free reign during the silent hours of darkness. During the day, the half of the earth illuminated is positive to the other unilluminated hemisphere. Hence the sensations of evening are different from those of morning. We have enjoyed the light and been positive during the day; when night advances, we become passive in the enveloping darkness, and enter a state twin sister to death, to arise in the morning again to meet the positive day.
Sleep during the night is more restoring than during the day—a distinction recognized by animals and plants. Night is no more terrible than day, yet the mind, oppressed by the negative condition then imposed on all things, peoples it with fancies. The hour of midnight is the established season for ghostly appearances. He who boldly walks along the churchyard path at noonday, would fain whistle to keep his courage up at the hour of midnight. Even Hæckel, the great naturalist, confesses that as the evening fell on him, while alone on the extreme point of Ceylon, and the shadows deepened on the weird forest and lonely sea, an “uncanny” feeling crept over him.
And the soul moves in the circle of the seasons; not only has human life its Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter; in the long three score years and ten, it swings through this circle with each succeeding procession of seasons, and experiences the changing impressions they so rapidly bring.
Unconscious Sensitiveness.
