A PLEA FOR THE OCCULT. 419 



tbe cause of temperament — or of what are called nervous organizations and the re- 

 verse. Also for that unaccountable thing so often seen in life, the control or 

 domination of one person over another. If the nervous system is sensitive to 

 magnetic influence it responds more quickly to such conditions, and we say the 

 person has but little firmness or persistence of purpose, while on the contrary is 

 the nervous organization less sensitive, the possessor is enabled to use the force 

 of his will to throw over the sensitive person a power to which it must yield. 

 Or the better to handle the subject mentally, we invent terms to express the two 

 conditions — the one is positive or the generator, the other negative or the passive 

 recipient. It must be remembered that wh'le this mode of operation may be 

 suggestion, the premises are not — for science admits the nerves, the brain, the 

 magnetic force and the result. All these are determined to be, and the phenome- 

 na apparent. Granting these, the method must be just as described — from all 

 analogy cannot be otherwise. So another occult force emerges from its hiding 

 place and takes its position with the known. 



With your permission this blind door will now be passed, and in deference 

 to the occasion and this presence, the attempt will be made to deal with what 

 you regard as pure speculation, or with that which science treats as entirely 

 occult — immortality and the possibility of knowing the fact. 



It is useless to travel over the old argument as to matter and mind. Much 

 of the world's philosophy has been an attempt to have us know that we cannot 

 know anything. This definition should supplant the present one of metaphysics 

 in our standard dictionaries. Happily, however, this is passing away, and ere 

 long we shall be permitted to recognize ourselves. We have been bound with a 

 scientific bond to ultimate atoms, with a force that no theologic dogma ever exer- 

 cised over men's minds. T4iese atoms are the mathematical units upon which 

 science builds the universe — persistent, indestructible, indivisible and unchange- 

 able in weight or volume. These inexorable atoms are next made to account for 

 changes of volume, temperature, latent energy, and the still more incomprehen- 

 sible change of chemical properties. Can we conceive an atom from scientific 

 formula ? It cannot have color — for light, which gives color, is a mode of motion- 

 It is neither hot nor cold — for heat is also a mode of motion. It has neither 

 electric or magnetic qualities for the same reason. It cannot have weight or 

 extension, for weight is the mere play of attractive forces, and extension is only 

 known as resistance, which is a manifestation of force. It can only have mag- 

 nitude, and in this regard it is not appreciable or comprehensible. If the atom 

 is this paradoxical thing, what must we say of a cosmic theory that rests solely 

 and only on this inconceivable thing ? If the atom is not, the theory built upon 

 it is a fiction. 



In this reference to the atom, the argument is not original, but condensed 

 from high scientific sources. It is not denied that it has been of service to 

 chemical science, as a working hypothesis, but some of the most distinguished 

 names in experimental chemistry — among them Cournot and Sir Benjamin Brodie, 

 professor of chemistry at Oxford — have declared it a hindrancerather than a help, 



