This is only an isolated case out of thousands of similar occurrences in every locality; in fact, if you walk along any palings in the country in the early summer, you will see at every few steps the evidence of similar tragedies. Those of you who live in the country must often have seen on palings little heaps containing a dozen or more of the small yellow Microgaster Cocoons, and if these are examined carefully they will be found to be surrounding the skin of a caterpillar. These minute cocoons may be kept under a wine glass and, from each a minute Ichneumon Fly, with (if a female) its sharp ovipositor, will emerge in due time. It is curious what mistakes can be made even by intelligent persons. I have had the skin of the caterpillar and this little heap of yellow Microgaster Cocoons sent me to examine, and have been seriously asked whether this was not a true case of Parthenogenesis; the suggestion being that the caterpillar had actually laid eggs, instead of waiting until it had become a moth, and that its efforts, to alter the course of nature, had been too much for its constitution and it had died in the act! There are other illustrations I should have liked to give but space will not permit, the most remarkable being, perhaps, the knowledge a Queen Bee possesses of the proximity of another Queen, even when that other is still in the pupa state, sealed up in a waxen cell. I have made numerous experiments with Queens of the common black English Bee (Apis mellifica), and also the yellow-striped Italian Bee (Apis ligustica), which belong to the same order (Hymenoptera) as the Ichneumon Flies, and the same marvellous sense of life appreciating life at a distance, and through solid matter, is experienced.
If we now follow the same Thought by examining the Inorganic, we make the extraordinary discovery that this power to influence, based on sympathetic action, is the very mainspring by which physical work can be sustained, and upon it depends entirely the very action of our physical senses. Our senses are based upon the appreciation of Vibration, in the Air and Ether, of greater or less rapidity, according to the presence in our organs of processes capable of acting in sympathy with those frequencies. The limits within which our senses can thus be affected are very small; the ear can only appreciate thirteen or fourteen octaves in sound, and the eye less than one octave in light; beyond these limits, owing to the absence of processes which can be affected sympathetically, all is silent and dark to us. This capacity for responding to vibration under sympathetic action is not confined to Organic Senses; the physical forces, and even inert matter, are also sensitive to its influences, as I will now demonstrate to you.
In wireless telegraphy it is absolutely necessary that the transmitter of the electro-magnetic waves should be brought into perfect harmony with the receiver—without that condition it is impossible to communicate at a distance; again, a heavy pendulum or swing can, by a certain force, be pushed, say an inch, from its position of rest, and each successive push will augment the swing, but only on one condition, namely, that the force is applied in sympathy with the pendulum's mode of swing; if the length of the pendulum is 52 feet, the force must be applied only at the end of each eight seconds, as, although the pendulum at first is only moving one inch, it will take four seconds to traverse that one inch, the same as it would take to traverse 10 feet or more, and will not be back at the original position till the end of eight seconds; if the force is applied before that time the swing of the pendulum would be hindered instead of augmented. Even a steam engine must work under this influence if it is to be effective; there may be enough force in a boiler to do the work of a thousand horse-power, but, unless the slide valve is arranged so that the steam enters the cylinder at exactly the right moment, namely, in sympathy with the thrust of the piston, no work is possible.
To understand the next example I want you first to recognise that, apart from its physical qualities, every material body has certain, what may be called, traits of character, which belong to it alone; there is generally one special trait or "partial," namely, the characteristic which it is easiest for the particular body to manifest, but I shall show you that by sympathetic action others can be developed. I have several pieces of ordinary wood, used for lighting fires, each of which, according to its size and density, has its special characteristic; if you examined each by itself you would hardly see that they are different from one another except slightly in length, but if I throw them down on the table, you would hear that each of them gives out a clear characteristic note of the musical scale: to carry this a step forward, I have a long, heavy, iron bar, about 4 feet long and 2 inches thick, so rigid that no ordinary manual force can move it out of the straight, and, from mere handling, you would find it difficult to imagine that it would be amenable to soft influences. But I have studied this inert mass, and, as each person has special characteristics, some being more partial than others to, say, Literary pursuits, Athletics, Music, Poetry, Engineering, Science, or Metaphysics, so I am able to show that this iron mass has not only a number of these "partials," some of which are extraordinarily beautiful and powerful, audible over long distances, but that by the lightest touch of certain small generating rubbers, not more than an ounce in weight and tipped with cork or leather, each of which has been put into perfect sympathy with one of those traits, I can make that mass demonstrate them both optically and audibly; but, without those special sympathetic touches, it is silent and remains an inert mass. This result is obtained by physical contact between the instrument and the mass, but we will now carry this another step forward and deal with the subject of the action of Influence at a distance, or what may be called Prayer, between two of these rigid masses. From what we have already seen, it is clear that the Soul of man could not possibly pray with efficacy to a graven image; there is nothing in sympathy between them, and, without sympathetic action, influence is impossible; but it is quite possible for Matter to pray with efficacy to Matter, provided the material soul, if we may use the analogy, is brought into perfect sympathy with the material god, and I can now put before you an experiment showing this taking place.
I have another heavy bar of iron, not so long but of the same thickness as the one already described, and have found its strongest characteristic; I have another small rubber, fashioned so that its characteristic is in perfect sympathy with that of the bar, namely, that the number of vibrations, in a second, of the instrument are exactly equal to those of the iron mass, and it is, therefore, as we saw in the last experiment, able by contact to influence the bar sympathetically. The slightest touch throws the bar into such violent vibration that a great volume of sound is produced, which can be heard a quarter of a mile away. The result of this sympathetic touch is far from being transient, in fact, the bar will continue to move, audibly, for a long time. This movement in the mass of iron was started by physical contact, but having once started the bar praying, willing, or thinking, whichever you like to call it, that bar now has the power to affect, without contact, another rigid bar of iron even when removed to great distances, provided the second bar possesses a similar characteristic, and that that characteristic has been brought into perfect sympathy with that of the first bar. I have a second bar which fulfils these conditions, and, although, at the outset, it had no power whatever to respond, it has been gradually, as it were, educated, namely, brought nearer and nearer into sympathy with the first bar, until it is now able to respond across long distances; it has acted across the whole length of one of the largest halls in London so strongly that it could be heard by all present. We will now reverse the process of bringing these bars into sympathy, and I will throw the first out of harmony by slightly changing its characteristic; the change is extremely small, quite inappreciable to the human ear, the bar giving out as full and pure a note as it did before the alteration was made; in fact, the change is so slight that it can still, with a little force, be stimulated by the same generator, and yet the whole power to influence has been lost; the first bar, although it is praying with great force, gets no response from the second bar, and, even if the bars are now brought on to the same table and put within a few inches of each other, there is still no reply, there is no sympathetic action, the efficacy of prayer between the two has been completely destroyed.
Do we not then see the principle upon which the efficacy of Prayer depends, that the whole object of a Human Soul, when using the words "Thy Will be done," is to bring itself closer and closer into perfect sympathy with the Absolute? When that is accomplished, we may understand, from our simile, that not only shall we and our aspirations be influenced by the Will of the Deity, but that then our wishes, in their turn, must have great power with God, and it becomes possible for even "Mountains to be removed and cast into the midst of the sea."
How truly the Philosopher Paul at the beginning of our Era recognised that the knowledge of God, which Christ Himself tells us is Everlasting Life, may be gained by the study of the material creation; His words were sadly overlooked by many who, half a century ago, were afraid that the discoveries of Science were dangerous to belief in the Divine. He says: the unrighteous shall be without excuse because "The invisible things of Him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even His everlasting power and divinity" (Romans i. 18 to 20, R.V.).
We have seen the truth of this wonderful statement, we have traced the reflection of the greatest attribute of the Deity, Divine Love, on the material plane. What has been the result of our investigation? We find that throughout the whole of Nature the one great universal power is Sympathy.
'Tis verily "love that makes the world go round." What a marvellous conclusion to our investigation! Let us see where it leads us. The whole of creation is the materialisation of the Thoughts of the Deity; we have, therefore, in the forces of Nature, the impress of the very Essence of God. Our Innermost Self is an emanation from Him, and Prayer, which, at the beginning, is only a striving to bring ourselves into harmony with the Deity, must, as the Soul grows in strength and knowledge, become a great power working under the wonderful principle of Sympathy. True prayer, indeed, becomes "Love in Action," and, under certain conditions, Prayer may actually be looked upon as the greatest physical force in Nature. But let us carry this one step further: can we, by our analogy of Matter praying, understand why "the knowledge of God is Everlasting Life"? Look at the first iron bar, and watch how, as long as it keeps on vibrating, the second bar, because it is in sympathy, will be kept in motion. If it were possible for the first bar to vibrate for ever, the second bar would, speaking materially, have everlasting life, through its being in perfect sympathy with the first bar; without this connection the bar would be lifeless. Now apply this to our Transcendental Personality; it is being nourished, the knowledge of God is increasing, it is at last pulsating in perfect harmony with the Deity, and when, for it, the Material Universe disappears, its affinity to Infinite Love must give it Everlasting Life. Everything that has not that connection is but a shadow which will cease to be manifest when the Great Thought is completed, the volition of the Deity is withdrawn, and the Physical Universe ceases to exist; nothing can then exist except that which is perfected, that which is of the essence of God—namely, the Spiritual. Perfect harmony will then reign supreme, such happiness as cannot be described in earthly language nor even imagined by our corporeal senses; hence, in the many passages referring to that wondrous Life hereafter, we are not told what Heaven is like but only what is not to be found there:
"Eye hath not seen nor ear heard,
Neither have entered into the heart of man
The things that God hath prepared for them that love Him."—1 Cor. ii. 9.