326 



• KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[Oct. 17, 1884. 



allowed to sleep outside their tents, provided they wear a warm 

 protective bandage over the eyes. My informant was a stranger to 

 me, but 1 have no doubt the above is in the main correct. 



That a sleeper in tlie moonlight runs the risk of waking blind, or 

 with his face distorted is a very prevalent belief among sailors. 

 Probably the fact that the face of the sleeper is cold — perhaps very 

 cold — for some hours together is a sufficient reason for the effects 

 occasionally observed. 



As regards the mackerel, however, although, as the Editor 

 remarks, moisture in conjunction with heat is a most fertile agent 

 in decomposition, it is difficult to see how cold, whether produced 

 by radiation or otherwise, can be damaging ; perhaps germs 

 settling down in the still air with the dew may be the culprits, if 

 any ; or, perhaps, Pliny and Plutarch notwithstanding. King 

 Charles's fish question is pertinent. A. Le Suecr. 



"LIFE AFTEE DEATH." 



[1453] — Before we can even reasonably speculate as to what 

 happens at death, it would seem advisable to find out, if possible, 

 what really happened in cases such as the one referred to by Mr. 

 Thome and in analogous cases. And it would be well if the expe- 

 riences were kept clearly distinct under the heads of subjective 

 and observed. 



In the hope that some good will come of this suggestion, I give 

 my experiences nnder the heads of drowning, aniesthetics, sleep, 

 fainting from weakness, effects of a violent blow. I may say these 

 are entirely subjective experiences ; what I have observed I reserve 

 as being in my opinion not so im])ortant. 



I make no inferences, as I hold that at present we know too 

 little of the subject to enable us to do so with any approach to 

 accuracy. The sensations or feelings are given in the order of 

 occurrence ; but I have no consciousness of the relative length of 

 time elapsing for each particular sensation. 



A. — Immersion in water until " loss of physical power, thought, 

 and consciousness ensued : — 1. Violent physical struggle to obtain 

 air; 2. Mental consciousness of danger, and vivid action of 

 memory in recalling the actions of life ; 3. Sense of weight, dark- 

 ness, and cold ; 4. Loss of physical power to move and feeling ; 5. 

 Loss of power of continuous thought ; G. Loss of consciousness. 



B. — Under an-.esthetics -. — Change begins with No. 3, and follows 

 the same order, but in several trials 1 do not remember ever to 

 have lost consciousness of being, although having no power to 

 reason or even form a concept of what was taking place. This par- 

 ticular phenomenon is more apparent in my case under the action 

 of nitrous oxide than with chloroform. 



C. — Sleep : I cannot at present separate the order of feelings. 

 They seem from Nos. 3 to 6 instantaneous. 



D. — Fainting : Change begins with No. 3, very marked, but 

 there seems no interval between this and 6. 



E. — There is no interval between consciousness and loss of con- 

 sciousness where the blow is unexpected. 



It is worthy of notice that in all these states there are two things 

 common. The action of the heart has never entirely and totally 

 ceased, and the limit of phenomena, except in B, is the same — viz., 

 " loss of consciousness," andtherefore I fail to see why A is death 

 any more than C, D, or E. 



If this is correct, why draw conclusions from A that cannot be 

 drawn from the other states ? Until we know more of the nature 

 of life and mind, it seems hopeless to expect to unravel the problem 

 of the effect of the cessation of life on mind. Supposing mind to 

 have a separate existence from physical life, it seems hardly likely 

 that the cessation of this life will affect it. If mind and physical 

 life are one, then death must destroy both. It seems to me, there- 

 fore, the solution of Mr. Thome's problem depends on the solution 

 of the questions relating to the nature and relationships of life and 

 mind. J. C. H. 



[1454] — Your correspondent " Selwyn Thorne" appears to 

 imagine that he has made an important case against those who 

 believe in a life after death. But he has done so by being singu- 

 larly illogical. Negations are usually regarded as somewhat diffi- 

 cult of proof ; but he has undertaken to prove a negation by a 

 mere assumption. He assumes that which every sane man will 

 doubt, that the math was dead, and says, "he lay at the bottom of 

 the water, to all intents and purposes stone dead." I believe that 

 there is not one single instance recorded in medical experience (of 

 course, I am not spealcing now of Biblical cases) where total death 

 has taken place and the patient has been resuscitated. Medical 

 men tell us that the heart beats and there is some sort of circula- 

 tion long after apparent death ; but here there was no length of 

 time, or resuscitation would not have taken place. To argue that 

 because this man saw or pretended to know nothing, that, there- 

 fore, something does not exist is very rich indeed. Besides, his 



experience is certainly different from the bulk of those who are 

 recovered from apparent death (for it is in such cases only appa- 

 rent) from drowning. I have known and conversed with several 

 who have been drawn from the water in a similar state, and their 

 testimony is unanimous in describing not a total suspension of the 

 mental faculties, but an extraordinary state of intromission, in 

 which, while dead to all around, they lived over again, in a moment 

 of time, the events of years of their lives. The logic of the fourth 

 paragraph is certainly beyond my comprehension, especially in its 

 conclusion. We shall require something more than Mr. Thome's 

 " probability" to induce us to accept his position. E. M. 



[I have myself conversed with a professional rowing man who 

 was " drowned," and who described this " intromission," or 

 crowding of the events of his life into a seemingly few seconds, as 

 preceding total insensibility. — Ed.] 



[1455] — The instance cited by Mr. Thorne is one of restored 

 "sensation" (vitality), not of restored "animation" (soul endow- 

 ment) ; in common parlance, the one expression conveys the same 

 meaning as the other, although there is a wide distinction. Chloro- 

 forming, under certain conditions, may occasion sensations similar 

 to death by suffocation. It results (first stage) in suspension of 

 sensation. Keep the patient too long under chloroform and death 

 (second stage) ensues in addition to insensibility. 



The " drowned " man had reached the first stage — the half-way 

 house — but not the second stage — " the undiscover'd country from 

 whose bourne no traveller returns." 



Apply M. Figuier's definition (quoted immediately above Mr. 

 Tliorne's letter), " Man consists of three elements — body, life, and 

 soul." The life had gone out of the " drowned " man, but not the 

 soul. He had no " post-mortem " experiences to record ; had he 

 remained as many hours nnder water as he did minotes, and then 

 been able to narrate his experiences, they wonld have been original 

 and interesting. C. J. T. 



[1456] — The question which Mr. Thome has raised in your issue 

 of Oct. 3, concerning an " after-life" may, I think, be satisfactorily 

 answered in the affirmative from a purely scientific point of view, 

 if yon will allow me a few lines to explain a theory which, althongh 

 it may be wrong, appears to me somewhat conclusive. 



Mr. Thorne tells us that the person whose restoration from an 

 apparently drowned state he witnessed could remember nothing 

 from the time of his dying last effort until the moment of returning 

 consciousness, that is to say, he had no idea as to the duration of 

 time, and (to his senses) the moment his faculties failed, the self- 

 same moment came the dawn of returning life. This is important. 



Now, let us suppose (as the opponents of after-life ideas would 

 have us suppose) that man is a chance production of " force" and 

 " matter," the " mind " or " life " bearing the same relation to the 

 physical forces as the body docs to the substantial elements — 

 namely, an elaborate and intricate compound, death being the 

 severance of these, or the want of unison between them, the same 

 natural forces existing after death, just as the chemical elements of 

 the body remain intact after death, although assuming different 

 forms and compounds. 



It must be evident, then, that, by the natural laws of " chance," 

 at some futme time (a long time, I will admit, but science can 

 place no limit to time), these elements (physical and chemical) 

 must inevitably be brought together in exactly the same com- 

 pounds and positions as formerly, the only requisite being sufficient 

 time, just as (on a colossal scale) a number of coloured balls, 

 placed in a bag, when drawn out at random, are capable of pro- 

 ducing ten thousand different orders of succession, any given 

 order must recur and recur again indefinitely if the balls be drawn 

 out a sufficient number of times. 



If, then, a person is unconscious of time after the moment of 

 death, as we must admit, this resuscitation must come upon him 

 almost instantaneously, despite the enormous extent of time which 

 may have elapsed. We have all heard, at one time or another, of 

 persons who, during illness, have remained unconscious for many 

 days together, and, upon returning to their former self, have not a 

 faint idea of the lapse of time. 



If there is auy error in this reasoning, I hope to be enlightened, 

 as I fail to see any. Trusting this letter may prove interesting to 

 some of your readers, Alex. Mackie. 



[1457] — I think no satisfactory answer can be given to the main 

 question in Mr. Selwyn Thome's letter, No. 1436, concerning the 

 future life. Whether we believe in such a state or not, no one can 

 lino^v. 



Analogous to heat and light, the materialists regard the 

 phenomena of thought as a form of motion of the molecules of the 



