Sensitiveness Proved by Psychometry.

Light emanating from suns and worlds, as it wings its swift way across the regions of space, bears on its rays the pictures of every object from which it is emptied or reflected, and hence the universe, from center to remotest bounds, is filled with pictures; is a vast storehouse of photographs of all events from the fading of a leaf to the revolution of a world since time began. Thus a ray of light leaving the earth during the coal age bears a picture of the then existing gigantic forests and inky seas, and is yet somewhere passing the remote coastlines of unknown systems, and could some swifter messenger overtake it, he would have a view of the world as it was when that ray was reflected from the carboniferous period. The messenger is not needed to overtake the fugitive ray, for the light thus reflected, struck against rock and tree, and photographed the images of every moment since the stars first sang together. Every atom still vibrates to the molding hand of life under which it has at some time passed, and the sensitive mind is able to catch these vibrations and interpret their meaning in forms of thought. The discovery of this wonderful faculty of the mind is not of recent date.

Almost fifty years ago an Episcopal Bishop remarked to Dr. Buchanan that when he touched brass, even in the night, when he could not know with what substance he came in contact, he at once felt a disagreeable influence and recognized an offensive metallic taste. Such experience had been common to a great number of persons, and frequently observed, but this time it was called to the attention of the right man. All the world for ages had seen bodies fall to the ground, and countless millions of eyes have seen the phenomenon with no more thought than the brute, until a falling apple drew the attention of Newton. Dr. Buchanan at once saw that there was a profound philosophy back of this fact which transcended the senses. He began a lengthy series of experiments, by which he discovered that it was by no means rare for persons to be affected by metallic and other substances. In a class of one hundred and thirty students at the Eclectic Medical College, forty-three were sensitive in greater or less degree. Medicines held in the hand without any knowledge of their properties, produced the same effect, varying only in degree as when taken into the stomach. By placing the hand, or merely coming into the atmosphere of a deceased person, the sensitive was able to locate and describe the disease. In this field Dr. Buchanan has stood almost alone, until recently M. Bourru and M. Burot of the Naval Medical School at Rochfort, have made extended experiments on the “action of medicines at a distance,” which is really another way of stating the facts observed by him a generation ago. They held the metals and drugs six inches or so from the back of the head of the patients and proved all that Dr. Buchanan claimed for his discovery.

But the discoverer did not rest here; he went a step further and found that a letter or any article having been brought in contact with the person, when taken in the hand or placed on the forehead of one sufficiently sensitive, gave the character of its writer or owner. Repeated experiments, such as any one may make, prove beyond question that the sensitive can in this manner read the character of the writer from his writings, his state of health, better than the most intimate friend, or even the writer himself. It is a marvelous statement, but only marvelous in our not understanding its cause. When this is revealed, and mystery removed, the subject allies itself with other phenomena of mind, having their origin in impressibility.

Prof. Denton carried the results of psychometry far beyond the boundaries reached by Dr. Buchanan. If the world is one vast picture gallery of every act and thought since the beginning of time, the fossil shell, the rock-fragment, the broken arrow head, the shred of mummy, and the rush leaf from the banks of the Nile should reproduce in the sensitive the story of their origin and age. By a great number of experiments, the details of which fill three volumes, Prof. Denton sought to establish this generalization and write the geological and pre-historic history of the earth. That he found a kernel of truth can not be denied, but he allowed sources of error to creep in and vitiate his wonderfully suggestive and patient research. A person sensitive to the degree that enables him to feel the influences given to a fragment of stone thousands of years ago, would be more strongly impressed with the influence imparted by the one who secured it, and held it in his hands before the experiment. It is from this cause that uncertainty rests on his otherwise well-planned experiments. Yet he has proved that such sensitiveness exists, and that by it the story of history from fragments of ruined architecture may be read, and scenes in geological ages by fossil, bone or shell be described.

How? Really psychometry, depending on the sensitiveness of the brain, is a lower degree of clairvoyance, and is merged, in its clearest forms, therein. Sensitiveness means the capability of receiving the psycho-ether waves as they pulsate from some center, and as everything touched by life is in a state of such vibration, the recognition is only a question of the delicacy of the receiving organization.

There is a vast accumulation of narratives of ghosts, witches, apparitions, hallucinations, illusions, dreams, etc., which it is the present fashion to relegate to the sphere of superstition and ignorance. Many of these, however anomalous, have a foundation in fact, and will be found, when stripped of the portions superstition has added, readily explainable, either as subjective, arising from impressions on the sensitive, or as objective and manifested by the same principles. As sensitiveness to these subtile influences greatly varies in different individuals and at different times in the same individual, and at times becomes clairvoyance, scarcely an illustration can be given of one without introducing the other. We must constantly bear in mind that there is one fundamental cause back of all these so-called occult phenomena, varying in the degree of its manifestation in accord with the channel through which it flows.

Subjective Spectral Illusions.—Dr. Abercrombie is authority for the following illustration of subjective spectral illusions: “A gentleman of high mental endowments, and now upwards of eighty years of age, of spare habits and enjoying uninterrupted health, has been for eleven years subject to the daily visits of spectral figures. They in general present human countenances; the head and body are distinctly defined, the lower parts are for the most part, lost in a kind of cloud. The figures are various, but he recognizes the same countenances repeated from time to time, especially of late years, that of an elderly woman, with a peculiarly arch and playful expression, and a dazzling brilliancy of eye, who seems just ready to speak with him.... This female is dressed in an old-fashioned Scottish plaid of Tartan, drawn up and brought forward over the head, and then crossed below the chin, as the plaid was worn by aged women in his younger day. He can seldom recognize among the spectres any figure or countenance which he remembers to have seen; but his own face has been presented to him, gradually undergoing the change from youth to manhood, and from manhood to old age.”

It is not necessary to call in the aid of an invisible being to explain such appearances. The house had been occupied by Scotch who dressed as described, and the influence they left impressed itself on the gentleman’s sensitive brain.

“All houses where men have lived and died are haunted houses,” not by actual ghosts, but by the subtile force which persons impart to everything with which they come in contact. That he was subject to some influence outside of himself is shown by the appearances always being of some one that he had never seen, and hence they could not have been revived pictures from his own brain. After he had been in the house for a long time he began to see his own face; that is, after he had imparted his own influence to his surroundings, he received them back as from a mirror.

Dendy, in his “Philosophy of Mystery,” mentions “M. Andral, who in his youth saw, in La Pitie, the putrid body of a child covered with larvæ, and during the next morning the spectre of this corpse lying on his table was as perfect as reality.” He could not see it by a mental effort, nor any where else than on his table, and whenever he looked at that, the appearance at once came. It may be said in explanation, that the sight of the disgusting object produced a strong impression on the optic nerves and mind, and a suggestive object, as the table reproduced the same state. We have no evidence that one object, under the same light, affects the optic nerves more than any other would under the same circumstances. Vivid mental impressions are more readily reproduced than those that scarcely ruffle the surface of thought; but this does not account for the student not seeing the appearance at any other time or place than on the table where it had laid, and which we would say retained the influence imparted to it by the body having lain there.

Professor Hitchcock says that during a severe sickness, “day after day visions of strange landscapes spread out before him—mountain, lake and forest; vast rocks, strata upon strata piled to the clouds; the panorama of a world shattered and upheaved, disclosing the grim secrets of creation, the unshapely and monstrous rudiments of organic being.” His son, Professor Charles Hitchcock, adds that his father saw the sandstone beds of the Connecticut valley spread out before him, covered with tracks, and by the superior insight wrought by sickness, cleared up some doubtful points to which he had vainly given his attention. Professor Hitchcock became, in consequence of his sickness, exceedingly sensitive, and the geological specimens near him, or that he had handled, brought up in his mind the pictures of their primeval age.

Hallucinations.—The received definition of an hallucination is a false perception without any material basis, being formed entirely in the mind. An individual who sees pictures on a blank wall, or who hears voices when no sound reaches his ear, is hallucinated. “The reason for this being that the erroneous perception constituting the hallucination is found in that part of the brain which ordinarily requires the excitation of sensorial impressions for its functions.” In this view, hallucination is evidence of mental derangement and incipient insanity. This explanation is by no means sufficient for this class of facts. That a certain tract of brain can of itself give the mind complicated representations, never before seen or imaged in the mind, is not established. The reappearance of objects that have been seen is better explained, and still more satisfactorily, by causes which unite them all together, and with all like phenomena. George Combe says of a painter who inherited much of the patronage of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and believed himself to possess a talent superior to his, was so fully engaged that he had painted three hundred large and small portraits in one year. The fact appeared physically impossible, but the secret of his rapidity and astonishing success was this: He required but one sitting of his model. His method was as follows, as given by himself: “When a sitter came, I looked attentively on him for half an hour, sketching from time to time on the canvas. I did not require a longer sitting. I removed the canvas, and passed to another person. When I wished to continue the first portrait, I recalled the man to my mind. I placed him on the chair, where I perceived him as distinctly as though really there, and, I may add, in form and color more decidedly brilliant. I looked from time to time at the imaginary figure and went on painting, occasionally stopping to examine the picture exactly as though the original was before me; whenever I looked towards the chair I saw the man. This method made me very popular, and as I always caught the resemblance, the sitters were delighted that I spared them the annoying sittings of other painters.”

This painter was far from incipient insanity. He was sensitive to impressions, and able by that organization to recall the image of the sitter, but not that of one who had not occupied the chair.

The Rev. T. L. Williams, Vicar of Porthleven, in The Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, July, 1885, gives his personal experience: “On an occasion when I was absent from home, my wife awoke one morning, and to her surprise and alarm saw me standing by the bedside looking at her. In her fright she covered her face with the bed clothes, and when she ventured to look again the appearance was gone. On another occasion, when I was not absent from home, my wife saw me, as she supposed, coming from church in surplice and stole. I came a little way, she says, and turned round the corner of the building, where she lost sight of me. I was at the time in the church in my place in the choir, where she was much surprised to see me on entering the building.... My daughter has often told me, and now repeats the story, that she was passing my study door, which was ajar, and looked in to see if I was there. She saw me in my chair, and as she caught sight of me, I stretched out my arms, and drew my hands across my eyes, a familiar gesture of mine. I was in the village at the time. Now, nothing occurred at or about the times of these appearances to give any meaning to them.” He adds: “A good many years ago there was a devout young woman living in my parish, who used to spend much of her spare time in church in meditation and prayer. She used to assert that she frequently saw me standing at the altar when I certainly was not there in the body.” Mr. Williams must have been a man peculiarly endowed with psychic force to thus impress himself.

The following is from the pen of the gifted Mary Howitt, and not only gives a remarkable fact, but her explanation of the same: “I conducted Mrs. Nenner through a room which contained some ancient furniture and a quantity of valuable old china. This china had been left in our care by a friend during his lengthened absence abroad. His thoughts from his place of sojourn at the antipodes constantly reverted to these heirlooms.

“‘Who are these six gentlemen, evidently brothers, sitting where the old china is?’ asked Mrs. Nenner, when we had passed through the room.

“‘There was no one there at all,’ I said, much surprised.

“‘Then,’ said she, ‘I must have seen six brother spirits. There they were sitting; tall, fair men, light haired, all strikingly alike, all the same age. They must be brothers!’

“I recognized in her description the owner of the china. Before Mrs. Nenner left, we showed her a portrait of the owner of the china, our friend on the other side of the world. She at once said, ‘Oh, that is one of the six brothers!’ In some mysterious manner the intensity of thought fixed by the possessor of the china upon his possessions—we knew that his thoughts constantly reverted to them—had been able to manifest itself to the sight in the form of the man himself, but multiplied into six forms. It should be observed that this gentleman was of what now we should term a ‘mediumistic’ temperament. It is possible, that being at the antipodes, he might be, at the time his multiplied form was beheld, asleep—it being night there when it is day with us—and that his thoughts might have, in a dream, revisited England.”

Since civilization began, mankind have held certain stones and metals as precious, and attributed rare qualities to charms, relics and amulets. We may indulge our mirth over the miraculous qualities ascribed to the bones of martyrs and the teeth of saints, a bit of wood from the true cross; but casting aside the rubbish gathered by imposture and credulity, we discover a great truth. Precious stones and metals have become so because of the subtile power of their emanations. In a true relic the sensitive perceives the full expression of the original owner’s life, and feels it reproduced in him. As the phonograph treasures up the tone, the accent, the quality of the voice, and the thought of the speaker, so the relic preserves and constantly gives forth the character of the one it represents.

Shrines and holy places have cause for being regarded as sacred, and their preservation in purity for the one and only purpose is correct in science. The church devoted to the worship of Jehovah holds its devotees with the invisible bonds reaching out from the walls forged from the psycho-aura of all preceding worshippers. That the members hold their houses exclusively for certain uses may be the result of superstition, but they are right in thus doing. A church building given over during the week to shows and entertainments, and nightly filled with the class such would draw, would become so saturated with worldly influences as to be unfit for the promulgation of the highest religious thought on Sunday. Both audience and minister would feel the depressing effect, and religious zeal would reach zero.

How strong and enduring the impress stamped on a relic or jewel may be, is shown in the following story told of Robert Browning by Mr. Knowles (Spectator, Jan. 30, 1869): “Mr. Robert Browning tells me that when he was in Florence some years since, an Italian nobleman (Count Ginnasi) was brought to his house. The Count professed to have great mesmeric powers, and declared in reply to Mr. Browning’s avowed skepticism, he would convince him of his powers. He then asked Mr. Browning whether he had anything about him then and there, which he could hand him, and which was in anyway a memento or relic. It so happened by curious accident, that Mr. Browning was wearing under his coat sleeves some gold wrist studs to his shirt, which he had quite recently taken into wear in absence of his ordinary wrist-buttons. He had never before worn them in Florence, or elsewhere, and found them in an old drawer where they had lain forgotten for years. One of these he took out and handed to the Count, who held it in his hand awhile and then said as if much impressed, ‘There is something here which cries out in my ear, Murder! murder!’

“And truly,” said Mr. Browning, “these studs were taken from the dead body of a great uncle of mine, who was violently killed on his estate in St. Kitts nearly eighty years ago. They were produced in court as proofs that robbery had not been the object of the strangler, which was effected by his own slaves. They were taken out of the night-gown in which he died and given to me.”