But when you come to Life, and its wonderful manifestations, you are more in the dark than ever. You understand less about this than you do even of dead matter. Take an ordinary every-day fact: you drop two seeds, whose component parts are the same, into the same soil. They grow up so close together that their roots mingle and their stalks intertwine. The one plant produces a long slender leaf, the other a short flat leaf—the one brings forth a beautiful flower, the other an ugly scruff—the one sheds abroad a delicious fragrance, the other is entirely inodorous. The hemlock, the wheatstalk, and the rose-tree, out of the same chemical ingredients contained in the soil, educe, the one deadly poison, the other wholesome food, the third a bright consummate flower. Can you tell me, Mr. Pettipo, how is this? Do you understand the secret by which the roots of these plants accomplish so much more than all your science can do, and so infinitely excel the most skillful combinations of the philosopher? You can only recognize the fact—but you can not unravel the mystery. Your saying that it is the "nature" of the plants, does not in the slightest degree clear up the difficulty. You can not get at the ultimate fact—only the proximate one is seen by you.
But lo! here is a wonderful little plant—touch it, and the leaves shrink on the instant: one leaf seeming to be in intimate sympathy with the rest, and the whole leaves in its neighborhood shrinking up at the touch of a foreign object. Or, take the simple pimpernel, which closes its eye as the sun goes down, and opens as he rises again—shrinks at the approach of rain, and expands in fair weather. The hop twines round the pole in the direction of the sun, and—
"The sunflower turns on her god when he sets,
The same look that she turned when he rose."
Do we know any thing about these things, further than they are so?
A partridge chick breaks its shell and steps forth into its new world. Instantly it runs about and picks up the seeds lying about on the ground. It had never learned to run, or to see, or to select its food; but it does all these on the instant. The lamb of a few hours' old frisks about full of life, and sucks its dam's teat with as much accuracy as if it had studied the principle of the air-pump. Instinct comes full-grown into the world at once, and we know nothing about it, neither does the Mr. Dapperling above named.
When we ascend to the higher orders of animated being—to man himself—we are as much in the dark as before—perhaps more so. Here we have matter arranged in its most highly-organized forms—moving, feeling, and thinking. In man the animal powers are concentrated; and the thinking powers are brought to their highest point. How, by the various arrangements of matter in man's body, one portion of the nervous system should convey volitions from the brain to the limbs and the outer organs—how another part should convey sensations with the suddenness of lightning—and how, finally, a third portion should collect these sensations, react upon them, store them up by a process called Memory, reproduce them in thought, compare them, philosophize upon them, embody them in books—is a great and unfathomable mystery!
Life itself! how wonderful it is! Who can understand it, or unravel its secret! From a tiny vesicle, at first almost imperceptible to the eye, but gradually growing and accumulating about it fresh materials, which are in turns organized and laid down, each in their set places, at length a body is formed, becomes developed—passing through various inferior stages of being—those of polype, fish, frog, and animal—until, at length, the human being rises above all these forms, and the law of the human animal life is fulfilled. First, he is merely instinctive, then sensitive, then reflective—the last the greatest, the crowning work of man's development. But what do we know of it all? Do we not merely see that it is so, and turn aside from the great mystery in despair of ever unraveling it?
The body sleeps? Volition, sensation, and thought, become suspended for a time, while the animal powers live on; capillary arteries working, heart beating, lungs playing, all without an effort—voluntarily and spontaneously. The shadow of some recent thought agitates the brain, and the sleeper dreams. Or, his volition may awake, while sensation is still profoundly asleep, and then we have the somnambule, walking in his sleep. Or, volition may be profoundly asleep, while the senses are preternaturally excited, as in the abnormal mesmeric state. Here we have a new class of phenomena, more wonderful because less usual, but not a whit more mysterious than the most ordinary manifestations of life.
We are astonished to hear men refusing to credit the evidence of their senses as to mesmeric phenomena, on the ground that they can not "understand" them. When they can not understand the commonest manifestations of life—the causation of volition, sensation, or thought—why should they refuse belief on such a ground? Are the facts real? Are these things so? This should be the chief consideration with us. Mysteries they may be; but all life, all matter, all that is, are mysteries too. Do we refuse to believe in the electric telegraph, because the instantaneous transmission of intelligence between points a thousand miles apart seems at first sight fabulous, and, to the uninitiated, profoundly mysterious? Why should not thought—the most wonderful and subtle of known agencies—manifest itself in equally extraordinary ways?
We do not know that what the mesmerists call clairvoyance is yet to be held as established by sufficient evidence. Numerous strongly authenticated cases have certainly been adduced by persons whose evidence is above suspicion—as, for instance, by Swedenborg (attested by many impartial witnesses), by Goethe, by Zschokke, by Townshend, by Martineau, and others; but the evidence seems still to want confirmation. Only, we say, let us not prejudge the case—let us wait patiently for all sorts of evidence. We can not argue à priori that clairvoyance is not true, any more than the Professor at Padua could argue, with justice, that the worlds which Galileo's telescope revealed in the depths of space, were all a sham. That truth was established by extended observation. Let us wait and see whether this may not yet be established, too, by similar means.