July 1, 1886.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



29; 



6 Si 6 I p. 



By Richard A. Proctor. 



The article on the nebulae in the Pleiades has been post- 

 poned till next month, owing to some delay in obtaining one 

 of the necessary pictures. 



In Munich on May 12 there was observed, in the early 

 morning, a phenomenon which excited terrible alarm among 

 the foolish. Heavy rain had fallen all night, and this rain 

 had clearly brought down a quantity of sulphur. For, all 

 round the pools and streams of standing or running water in 

 the streets were streaks of yellow mud, of the primrose tint 

 proper to the substance which S;itan claims peculiarly as bis 

 own. The old women of both sexes, with their accustomed 

 brilliancy, recognised the approaching end of the world in 

 this ten-ible phenomenon. After smelling at the yellow 

 mud, and finding that there was clear evidence of the devil's 

 favourite odour, they remembered that the end of the world 

 had been specially announced for the year 1886 — for the 

 exquisite reasons that Easter day falls later this year than it 

 has for more than a century, and that the year both begins 

 and ends with a Friday. A portentous number of Fridays^ 

 positively fifty-three, instead of the usual fifty-two I — a late 

 East-er, and a fell of devil's dust ought to bring about the 

 end of the world, at least when four comets are about and 

 the giant planets have recently passed their perihelia, while 

 the great pyramid has already told us of the end of all 

 things for four years (June 1882 marked, at any rate, the 

 end of the Christian dispensation, according to the Pyra- 

 midalists). 



* * * 



But, alas I there are always disappointments. Did not 

 the comet of 1882 threaten the world's end and then go off 

 for a thous;ind jears or more? Did not the year 1000 pass 

 without the world's end, naturally due then (for the devil 

 can count up to a thousand, it seems), being brought to 

 pass? Nay, unless the writers of the gospels, whoever they 

 may have been, were very much deceived, very high autho- 

 rities, including one who should have been the very highest, 

 were well assured that the world's end was coming eighteen 

 hundi-ed years ago : yet it omitted to aiTive. 



* * * 



A_N'D so it was this time, so far as the promise of the 

 sulphur dust was concerned ; for it changed itself into 

 something quite different. Indeed, those wretched sceptics 

 the students of science asserted that it never had Iseen 

 sulphur at all, but was simply the pollen of the fir, which 

 this year has been so great in quantity that every wind 

 has swept clouds of it from the gi-eat fir forests of South 

 Germany. 



* * * 



It is too bad for the evil one thus to deceive those who 

 put their trust in him and expect a suljjhurous end shortly 

 for this world. Perhaps it is because he has been a liar 

 from the beginning, as — according to John viii. 4i — was also 

 his father before him. (Though, somehow, even the revisers 

 have not been bold enough to translate that verse correctly 

 which teaches that Satan had a father : of his mother our 

 familiar sajings about " the devil and his dam " have long 

 since taught us.) 



* * * 



I AM inclined to suggest that vegetable dust in the air 

 may perhaps explain the cold siiells in April and May better 

 than meteor dust. But if meteor dust at all is in question, 

 most assuredly it is not in the wildly impossible way sug- 

 gested recently in Xalure. The editor of Xatwe has allowed 



his well-known dislike and contempt for mathematics to 

 carry him too far in admitting such nonsense. Multiplica- 

 tion may be vexation (many fathers find it so), and division 

 as bad (as divided households .show) ; the rule of three 

 (divine or otherwise) may puzzling be, and practice (as of 

 some professing Christians) make us sad ; hut we must not 

 multiply two by two and get five for the product. 



* * * 



It becomes depressing in Germany to see every day and 

 every hour the signs of military life, and to think of what 

 those signs really mean. The pride, pomp, and circumstance 

 of glorious war are all very well on special occasions, though 

 even those more splendid adjuncts of militarj' relations 

 become wearisome after awhile, and are always essentially 

 unpleasing to the philosophic mind, as being a trifie too 

 strongly suggestive of barbaric ancestry. But in military 

 countries one sees much more of the dreary drudgeiy of 

 military training and warlike prepai-atiou than of anything 

 particularly splendid. To see this day after day, to remem- 

 ber that about two millions of men are always engaged thus 

 meanly throughout Europe, and to consider what all this 

 really means, is to be very strongly moved b}- the thought 

 that " we men are a little race." 



* * * 



That which most men — and the human race must be 

 judged by the majority, whatever the minority of the wiser 

 sort might wish — that which most men regard as the finest 

 of all the fine things men may do, is merely a gaudy remnant 

 of savagery. The fighting qualities of mankind have been 

 developed primarily in direct connection with plunder on an 

 ever-growing, and therefore ever more degrading, scale. 

 And though now the secondary relations of our fighting 

 qualities — their defensive as compared with their oflensive 

 appliciitions — are more considered than they used to be, yet 

 no one am read the expressions of opinion in Continental 

 newspapers, at any time, without feeling that the first object 

 of all European armaments is defiance, not defence. The 

 peoples have been so long employed by the rulers to fight 

 for territory — to seize territory from others, and to retain it 

 when seized — that they have inherited the imperial instinct 

 (that is, the love of plunder and oppression), and rejoice 

 as much in their degradation as the average monarch in 

 grasping that which is not his own. 



" ^Ir. Grant Allen", in his Shilling Shocking ' Kalee's 

 Shrine ' — a verj' striking story, by the way — has done good 

 service in drawing attention to the dangers of what is 

 commonly called mesmerism. He steers the true course 

 between the folly of those who recognise the supernatural 

 in mesmeric phenomena, and the unwisdom of those who 

 reject those phenomena altogether. Wldle thus helping 

 to remove the unwholesome attraction which mesmerism, 

 in being mysterious, possesses for weak minds, Mr. Allen 

 eftectively shows also that the effects of the perfectly natural 

 processes by which the hypnotic condition is produced may 

 be most mischievous. 



* * * 



" This may happen in two ways, on one only of which 

 Mr. Allen insists in his story. The worst eff'ect of 

 mesmerism is found in a weakening of the mind brought by 

 stupefying influence under the power of suggestions pre- 

 sented b}- another mind. There can be no doubt that a 

 mind of average strength after being reduced many times to 

 the hypnotic state is permanently weakened, will power 

 is diminished, and what more serious loss caw any man 

 sustain \ ' Oh, well for him whose will is strong,' .'^ys our 

 Poet Laureate, and we all feel in our inmost hearts how 



