Moreover, in life, the matter is changing constantly and entirely—“renewed once in seven years.” Yet not only does the “plan,” the “idea,” of the material man remain the same, but his mind grows for forty, sixty, sometimes eighty years, while the body begins to go down hill at twenty-eight.
Moreover, we never see the sum of matter in the universe increasing, and we do see the sum of mind increasing every time two old thoughts coalesce into a new one, or even every time matter assumes a new form before a perceiving intelligence, not to speak of every time Mr. Bryan or Mr. Roosevelt opens his mouth. We cite these last as the extreme examples of increase—in quantity. We see another sort of increase every time Lord Bryce takes up his pen—the mental treasures of the world are added to—the contents of the cosmic reservoir worthily increased—the cosmic soul greater and more significant than before.
Parts of it farther and farther removed in time and space [pg 159]seem to be manifesting themselves through the sensitives every day: so the evidence is increasing that none of it has ever been extinguished. The evidence that any part has been, is merely the evidence that it has stopped flowing through each man when he dies. But there are pretty strong indications that it has welled up occasionally through another man, and yet with the original individuality apparently even stronger than it was in the first man—strong enough to make an alien body—Foster’s, in the instances quoted, look and act like the original twin body.
Yet while the cosmic soul idea seems very illuminating, and even stimulating, as far as it goes, it soon lands us in the swamp of paradox surrounding all our knowledge. How reconcile it with our individuality—the individuality as dear as life itself—virtually identical with life itself? Well, we can’t reconcile them, at least just yet. But we can pull our feet up from the swamp, and make a step that may be towards a reconciliation. Each of our brains is a network of channels through which the cosmic soul flows; and there are no two brains alike—hence our individuality.
But those brains perish. Must individuality be conceded at the cost of our mental continuity? Perhaps not. Grant even the original mind-atom to be a constituent, or inseparable companion, of an original matter-atom (wouldn’t it be more up to date to say vibration in each case?), mind, as we have already tried to demonstrate, is not limited, as matter seems to be, to those primitive atoms.
The vague but almost unescapable notion of the cosmic soul also opens up some hint of an explanation of hypnotism, including, of course, thought transference. These vague hints or gleams on the borderland of our knowledge are of course something like what must be such hints of what we know as color, as go through the pigment spots [pg 160]on the surface of one of the lower creatures. Such as our limits are, we can express them only in metaphors. But for that matter all of our language beyond a few material conceptions, is metaphor from them. Well, on the hypothesis (or facing the fact, if you prefer) of the cosmic soul, telepathy, hypnotism and all that sort of thing at once affiliates itself with all our easy conceptions of interflow—in fluids, gases, sounds, colors, magnetism, electricity, etc. It’s all a vague groping, but there seems something there which, as we evolve farther, we may get clearer impressions of.
Well, to return to our sheep. Foster didn’t get the clearness and intensity of his visions from the comparatively indistinct and placid impressions in his sitters’ minds. There must be something more than hypnotism from the sitter.
Now here is a tougher case which opens a new element of the problem. It is from The Autobiography of a Journalist, by W.J. Stillman, Boston, 1901, Vol. I, pp. 192-4: Not many of our older readers will require any introduction of Stillman. For the younger ones, we may say that he was a very eminent art-critic; spent most of the latter half of his life abroad, being part of the time our consul at Crete; wrote a history of the Cretan Rebellion, and other books; and was a regular correspondent of The Nation, and of The London Times. We never knew his veracity questioned.