25. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIFTH.
MAGIC EXPLAINED.
You ask the secret of the Preacher's power
over the giant frame of the hardy Peter?
Was it magic, wizard-craft, or animal
magnetism? It was none of these. Magic
demands incantations, wizard-craft must work
by spells, and animal magnetism can only act
when it is favored by a compliant Will.
Magnetism thoroughly destroys, for the time,
all consciousness through the senses. It is the
operation of one Will over another, and can
never be accomplished in its important phases,
unless the subject yields his will captive to the
will of the operator.
Yet here in the case of Peter, we have a
strong man, in the full possession of his every-day
faculties, stricken suddenly into a paralysis
of speech and motion, while his Will, more
powerful even than the Will of the Preacher,
resists with all its force.
How shall I explain this?
Let us suppose for the moment, that the
substance or element called
electricity, is the
agent by which Mind acts upon Matter, or to
speak more plainly, the instrument by which
the Brain commands the motion of the Arm
and Tongue. Comprehend this in all its
phases, and then admit a second supposition.
Suppose that you can control the
electricity
of another person — control it against that person's
will — by touching a certain nerve in the
hand, the finger, or the arm? This control
once obtained, accompanied at the same time
by an impression upon the subject's mind
does it not follow that all his powers of muscular
motion, are, for the time, made prisoner
to your pleasure?
Thus, the Preacher, inferior in strength and
will to our friend Peter, obtained the mastery
over his muscular powers, against his will, by
controlling the electric force of his organization.
Advance a step farther. Admit that the
senses do not reside in the tongue, the eye, the
ear, the hand, and the nostrils, but in the brain.
That brain can only act by electric force.
Make an impression then upon the electricity
of the brain, and it follows that the subject
will see, taste, smell, touch, hear and feel, at
your pleasure.
These suppositions, which recent discoveries
have established as facts, fully explain all
the wonders of magic and witchcraft.
We have seen, more than one incredulous
person who laughed with all his soul at the
very mention of these discoveries in science,
suddenly confounded into involuntary belief.
The unbeliever has been made to taste, hear,
see, smell, and feel in accordance to the will of
another person. Thus a glass of water, has been
changed into acid, into wine, into honey —
changed not in reality, but to the taste — by an
impression produced by the operator upon the
electric force of the subject's brain. We have
seen with our eyes, and experienced in our own
person, wonders that far exceed the most improbable
legends of magic — wonders that appear
miraculous and yet cease to be wonders at all,
when the secret of their operation is explained by
a reference to the unchangeable laws of Nature.
Our limits will not permit a complete discussion
of the science. But hundreds of persons
in Philadelphia and New York, persons
of all shades of disposition, temperament and
intellect, can testify to the performance of ex
periments, in their presence and upon them
personally, which mock the powers of belief,
and leave the exploits of olden time sorcery, far
in the distance. And unlike the history of
ancient magic, the cause of these experiments
is not made a mystery, nor surrounded with
all the display of scenic effect, and theatrical
pomp. The cause is known to the persons who
witnessed the experiments; and the cause, which
we but crudely describe is as simple and as scientific
in its explanation as the operations of
the law of gravity.
The fact that a man like the Preacher, exercised
such control upon the physical powers
of a giant like Peter, was known to us long
before we became acquainted with the cause.
Indeed such facts are scattered copiously over
the history of all ages. That the Preacher
abused the knowledge of the great Truth, is
no more an argument against its reality and
its benefits to mankind, than his abuse of the
Gospel, to purposes the basest, is an argument
against the truth and benefits of Revelation.
In our history, a knowledge of the great
Facts of Electricity, and its Connection with
the Brain, is used by a bad man for the accomplishment
of a bad end.
But this knowledge, properly developed, is
capable of the greatest benefit to the human
family. By it may be cured, or at least alleviated,
one half of the diseases which afflict the
human organization. Through its influence,
all those diseases, especially, which spring
from the Mind, and from the operation of
Mind upon Matter, may be swept from the history
of human suffering.[1]
Not the least important of its benefits, is the
fact, that it rears a platform on which Reason
and Faith may meet in concord. It crushes
scepticism, and not by calling infidel! — but by
unrolling the curtain which has for ages concealed
those simple and awful Laws by which
God governs the Universe — not the Universe
of worlds alone, but also the Universe of Immortal
Souls.
In the Dark Ages, men of learning were
doubtless familiar with these great truths. But
they were forced by fear of priestly faggot or
mob outrage, to cloak them in a veil of scenic
mystery.
So, in the Dark Ages, Priests of the Church
either from fear of man or want of faith in God,
cloaked under a drapery of cumbrous mystery
the great facts of Religion: That all men are
brothers, and God is the Father of all. To
do good to men, is to truly worship God.
The brotherhood of mankind and the all-paternal
character of God, are the vital
truths, hidden under all forms of Religion.
And then Priests and Learned Men, instead
of making Faith and Reason, and Science and
Religion meet in concord, took isolated paths,
and cursed the world with a barbarous Faith
and a mountebank Philosophy.
But the day comes, when the heart of the
child and the brain of the learned man, will
arrive by different paths, at the same great
centre: when Reason will be married to Faith:
and both Faith and Reason terminate their pilgrimage
at the altar of God.
Every step in scientific discovery, is also a
step gained towards this altar.
Two great truths we should gird forever to
our hearts:
— The Scientific man, whose researches
in science do not confirm and enlarge the
belief in God and Immortality, is a false Philesopher,
who gropes his way every hour far
and farther from the throne of God.
— The Priest, whose faith does not teach
him that God as the Father of all mankind,
wishes and will accomplish the salvation of all,
is a false Prophet, also groping his way from
darkness unto deeper darkness.
The false Priest and the false Philosopher,
are twin-blasphemers.
Their Faith and Reason are alike corrupt.
Their teachings are a mockery of Humanity
and a denial of God.
