450 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



scientists of America to disprove them; one Symmes regarded the earth 

 as hollow and habitable within, with openings at the poles which he 

 offered to explore for the consideration of the "patronage of this and 

 the new worlds"; while Symmes, Jr., explains how the interior is 

 lighted, and that it probably forms the home of the lost tribes of Israel; 

 and one Teed announces on equally conclusive evidence that the earth 

 is a "stationary concave cell . . . with people, Sun, Moon, Planets 

 and Stars on the inside," the whole constituting an "alchemico-organic 

 structure, a Gigantic Electro-Magnetic Battery." If we were to pass 

 from opinions regarding the shape of the earth to the many other and 

 complex problems that appeal to human interests, it would be equally 

 easy to collect 'ideas' comparable to these in value, evidence and eccen- 

 tricity. With the conspicuously pathological outgrowth of brain-func- 

 tioning — although its representatives in the literature of my topic are 

 neither few nor far between — I shall not specifically deal; and yet the 

 general abuse of logic, the helpless flounderings in the mire of delusive 

 analogy, the baseless assumptions, which characterize insane or 'crank' 

 productions, are readily found in modern occult literature. 



The occult consists of a mixed aggregate of movements and doc- 

 trines, which may be the expressions of kindred interests and disposi- 

 tions but present no essential community of content. Such members 

 of this cluster of beliefs as in our day and generation have attained a 

 considerable adherence or still retain it from former generations con- 

 stitute the modern occult. The prominent characteristic of the occult 

 is its marked divergence in trend and belief from the recognized stand- 

 ards and achievements of human thought. This divergence is one of 

 attitude and logic and general perspective. It is a divergence of intel- 

 lectual temperament that distorts the normal reactions to science and 

 evidence and to the general significance and values of the factors of our 

 complicated natures and our equally complicated environment. At 

 least it is this in extreme and pronounced forms; and shades from it 

 through an irregular variety of tints to a vague and often unconscious 

 susceptibility for the unusual and eccentric, combined with an instabil- 

 ity of conviction regarding established beliefs that is more often the 

 expression of the weakness of ignorance than of the courage of inde- 

 pendence. Occult doctrines are also likely to involve and to proceed 

 upon mysticism and superstition; and their theme centers about such 

 problems as the nature of mental action, the conception of life and 

 death, the effect of cosmic conditions upon human events and endow- 

 ment, the delineation of character, the nature and treatment of dis- 

 ease, or indeed about any of the larger or smaller realms of knowledge 

 that combine with a strong human and possibly a practical interest, a 

 considerable complexity of basal principles and general relations. 



In surveying the more notable instances of the modern occult, it is 



