The theory of what is called the attraction of gravitation is one of the scientific facts which have recently been abandoned as unsatisfactory. It is found that the theory of “attraction” does not answer to the facts as experimentally determined. Theories that are inelastic are apt to be negatived by the discovery of new facts or modified beyond recognition by extended observations. The Earth itself is a huge magnet whose radial influence extends some fourteen feet beyond its surface, and this fact has to be taken into account in all local magnetic observations.
The permeability of matter was a fact that had been under scrutiny for a long time before the discovery of the Röntgen rays. Sir David Brewster notes the passage of carbon through solid wood by means of electric fluid, and by an electric current an acid may be separated from its sodium base and passed through dilute syrup of violets without changing the colour of the vegetable solution. The question then arises, in what form was the carbon in the one case and the acid in the other when they passed through the respective media? Obviously their atomic vibrations were temporarily raised in such degree by electrical action as to change them from their normal characters. I suggest to psychologists that something of the same or a similar nature may occur in the case of individuals when acting under the influence of hypnotism or spiritual afflatus, ecstasy, etc. The question is whether they can be rendered permanent effects.
But these are not by any means the whole of the problems confronting modern Science, which nevertheless has a tendency to become dogmatic in other matters with which it is not officially concerned, as one may learn from a reading of Häckel’s Riddle of the Universe. In Ernst Häckel we see probably the last of the old school of materialistic philosophers. Another problem is that of atomic arrangement. It has been observed that two chemical bodies composed of exactly the same number of atoms of the same elements assume entirely different characteristics by reason of their respective atomic arrangement. This fact, while wholly unexplained, opens up many interesting psychological issues and serves by analogy to explain why two human beings compounded of exactly similar cosmic elements, manifest different characters and faculties. Science has too long neglected the free use of its own hypothesis of the solidarity of the system, and while astronomy employs interplanetary action in all its calculations, it scouts the idea of astro-meteorology and relegates astrology to the limbo of antiquated superstitions. Yet both these concepts are necessary and logical dependents of the cosmical hypothesis.
Up to the present day Science has ignored psychology and opposed the claims of psycho-therapeutics. Medical science other than that depending on surgery will soon find that the process of readjustment in the human organism rendered necessary by the rapidly changing conditions of modern civilization and the opening-up of new centres of activity in the mind-sphere of the world, will present a new series of pathological conditions to which the prescriptions of the Pharmacopoeia are altogether inadequate. The psychic origin of disease will have to be admitted and provided against. The x-factor in human pathology which defies the action of drugs and evades the scalpel, call it by what name we may, will increasingly assert itself, and medical men will have perforce to take it into their counsels, make friends with it and get to understand its vagaries. The plurality of worlds and the habitability of the other planets in the solar system, taught by Pythagoras in the sixth century B.C., has received a certain speculative recognition by astronomers, notably Camille Flammarion, Richard Proctor, Schiaparelli and Sir Robert Ball, in recent years. It was affirmed as fact by that remarkable man of science and inspiration, Baron Swedenborg. But in a contemporary issue of the journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Prof. Aitken, of the Lick Observatory, states, as the result of his researches, that the Moon is a dead world, with the exception perhaps of low forms of vegetable life sustained by water vapour exuding from the Moon’s interior; Mercury gets seven times as much heat as the Earth and keeps the same face towards the Sun, offering the alternative of an eternal night or an equally unending tropical heat and daylight, from which it is not protected by any atmosphere. Venus, having many characteristics similar to the Earth, is admitted to be problematical, since it is not yet decided whether its day and year are equal or not. If they are, then it is uninhabitable. Mars has a rare atmosphere, and there is not enough water on the planet to fill an American lake. It has a low temperature, and there may be vegetable and animal life there, but no beings of intelligence. The “canals” may be natural or artificial canals or merely earthquake markings. Jupiter is a semi-sun, its development is in a state of chaos, and it is probably gaseous throughout with matter distributed as on the Sun, there being no defined surface or crust. Saturn resembles Jupiter, but probably is not so far advanced, and it is even less fitted for human habitation than Jupiter.
We see therefore that as between the teaching of Pythagoras and that of Prof. Aitken there is a great gulf fixed. It will probably be bridged by a little freer use of the scientific imagination that Prof. Huxley extolled. The great American astronomer has argued humanity out of existence in a manner so complete as to warrant the instant dismantling of the statue of Bruno by the Vatican. But alas for the shortcomings of dogmatic science, we have not yet been told how or why the Earth alone is favoured by the presence of humanity. We are left to speculate upon the question as to what has become of the Moon’s humanity, supposing this dead orb was once alive and afforded habitable conditions. We are left wondering why conservative Nature evolved the planets Neptune and Uranus—which “are so far away from the Sun that its light and heat can hardly be effective in protecting life upon them, even should life in any way originate there”—if they are never to come within the life-belt limit of the solar rays! These vapourings are altogether unworthy of the name of Science, and are, in their way, as fanciful and speculative as any of the superstitions of a primitive religion. Who gave the astronomer to know that man as we see him is the only sort of humanity or intelligent being that can exist? It is open to him to remark that even should there be forms of intelligent life on other planets we should not recognize them as human. That is beside the mark; we do not recognize the human by its form, we do not confound the man with the animal part of him; and we may even speak of discarnate humanity. In every possible way we protest that articulate language, which infers articulate thought and intelligence, is the criterion of the human, and in this category we include for sociological reasons all that are of human generation, whether intelligent and articulate or not. Of the “infinite variability” of God as expressed in Nature, the astronomer takes no count. Here on this globe of ours we find the human persisting in temperatures varying from over + 150° to - 30°, and we have no reason for suggesting that the power of adaptation to environment is at the maximum in this world. Violent ophthalmia and even madness would result in us if “the earth’s green livery” were suddenly and permanently changed to red. But a very little alteration in the chemical constitution of the vitreous fluid in the eye would render us immune from these evils, and we have every reason for thinking that were such a colour-change to take place, Nature would not be long in adapting herself to the new conditions. But she would first be sure that they were likely to be permanent, for although very amicable, the old lady is extremely cautious and prudent! What we know as solar light and heat have no existence outside the earth’s atmosphere, and even within it they only have the values that our sensation-consciousness gives to them; so that all we can scientifically assume in regard to those planets that have no atmosphere is that their humanities, if they have any, must be physiologically different from man as we know him. We cannot argue that he does not exist or that he cannot exist on them.
The sum of the matter is this, we have need of a Religion that is scientific, and equally of a Science that is religious. What we do not positively know we may logically infer, but we have to guard ourselves against the tendency to take the inference for fact and to dogmatize about things which are wholly unrelated to our personal experience. The many curious observations I shall have occasion to make in the course of these pages are so remote from general experience and so far removed from scientific scrutiny as to belong to the category of things called “occult,” and it was therefore expedient that the reader should have a fairly clear idea that all the statements of orthodox science do not rest upon the immovable rock of observed fact, and for this reason are not so well founded as many of the conclusions of occult science. It is advisable also that the reader should discern between the theoretical value of a statement and its experimental value. Many things which appear reasonable will not respond to test, and others that seem unreasonable are found nevertheless to be true.
CHAPTER III
THE MODERN MIRACLE
It has been said that the medical practice of the future will have to provide for the interference in ordinary therapeutic methods of an x-factor, which is amenable to hypnotic suggestion and to auto-suggestion, but which on rare occasions assumes a more positive and extraordinary form, and acts spontaneously. Indeed, we may have to admit the possibility of an extraneous healing power acting independently of medical skill and contrary to all recognized therapeutic agents, medicinal or clinical.
An instance of this is to be seen in what is called the Modern Miracle. A miracle, it should be understood, is not supernatural. We have no reason for prescribing limits to Nature’s powers. A miracle is simply an abnormal manifestation of those powers, and hence something to be wondered at. The case in point is that of Miss Dorothy Kerin, who on the night of Sunday, the 18th February, 1912, being bedridden with advanced tuberculosis, concomitant disease of the kidneys, and finally suffering from loss of sight and speech, together with some signs of aphasia, was suddenly and miraculously cured entirely of all ailments, and when medically examined was pronounced to be absolutely free from tubercle bacillus, or any other form of morbid disease, and to be in complete possession of all her faculties and normal bodily functions. The evidence is unassailable and the facts beyond dispute. We have to arrange our thought and modify our therapy to accommodate these facts.
Dorothy Kerin was born on the 28th November, 1890, in London, her father being Irish. She received an ordinary middle-class education in a private school, and would have gone on the stage, where her sister, Norah Kerin, has achieved considerable success, but for the break in her health.