May 37, 1887.] 



SCIJEJSrCE. 



511 



over the skin, or when the two points of a compass 

 seem as three), the condition is termed ' paraes- 

 thesia.' By analogy the term 'para-psychology' 

 may be invented to apply to those weirdly im- 

 aginative systems of thought by which some in- 

 tellects strive to satisfy their inner longings, aud 

 to make the world seem rational. For these per- 

 sons the advance of science has no meaning ; 

 to them it is dimply painfully slow and accurate 

 walking ; while their ideal of locomotion is fly- 

 ing in a frictionless ether. 



An exquisite example of this type of mind 

 (which, by the way, often contains a kernel of 

 sound truth) is exhibited in a recent attempt to 

 portray the evolution of human consciousness in 

 a series of hiahly symbolic and complex geomet- 

 rical diagrams. The author of the work began 

 his career as an architect, but, dissatisfied with his 

 profession, went to India to pursue ' the study of 

 internal truth,' and spent twenty years in com- 

 pleting this elaborate system of symbolism. A 

 frank admission, that, like many of the persons 

 to whoTu tliese diagrams were shown, the present 

 writer does not understand them, will readily 

 excuse him from giving an exposition of their 

 meaning. All that can be done is to piece to- 

 gether a fevv sentences from this geometrical 

 symbolis'ji. There are five standing-grounds 

 of hiunan evolution, — from the first, repre- 

 senting sense-perception ; to the second, which 

 is merely negative and unrepresentable ; to the 

 third, the spliere of self-sacrificing duty and 

 spiritual enlightenment ; to the fourth, again 

 an unthinkable negative stage ; culminating in 

 the fifth, a stage, though positive, yet so ideally 

 spiritual as to entirely surpass our finite concep- 

 tions, and only glimpsed perhaps now and then by 

 a supersensitive clairvoyant. The first stage is 

 represented by a plane ; the third finds its repre- 

 sentation in three dimensions ; while the fifth 

 would require a fourth dimension to do it justice ; 

 the intermediate negative stages being entirely un- 

 representable. On the first plane the forms take 

 the shape of leaves ; a pointed apex indicating a 

 male form, or Ond, while a rounded apex indi- 

 cates the female form, or Onde. The limit of the 

 one is a straight line, the symbol of severe intel- 

 lect ; of the other, a circle, symbolizing all-embra- 

 cing emotion. In the third stage the leaves be- 

 come flowers, with trumpet-shaped corollas for 

 the males, and bell-shaped for the feuiales ; with 

 colors suggested by spinning the plane forms (cut 

 out of cardboard) in a dark room illuminated by 

 a beam of light, and a host of symbolic details 

 mirroring nothing less than the entire history — 

 l)ast, present, and future — of the human race. 

 Add to this a painstaking forcing of all these 



botanical forms by a fanciful application of ai'ith- 

 metical, geometrical, and harmonic progressions ; 

 intersperse this with a sprinkling of theosophic 

 cant and vague word-philosophemes, — and some 

 notion of this para-psychological system will per- 

 haps result. If not, it is only necessary to add, 

 that the author has frequently drawn horoscopes, 

 has discovered that our solar system is a male 

 universe and is represented by the use of this 

 geometry by a nine-petaled lily, while the earth 

 (mirdbile dictu) finds its symbol in a form like J , 

 which was actually used by astronomers for this 

 purpose. 



That all this is full of life and meaning to its 

 author, and will be suggestive to many readers, 

 there is no reason to doubt ; any more than there 

 is to doubt that he was unconscious of forcing his 

 diagrams into the shape of leaves and flowers in- 

 stead of their teaching him that each heavenly 

 body was mirrored in a plant below. 



Apart from the sad spectacle of misused talent 

 (and that can be seen in any insane-asylum), the 

 survey of such a system emphasizes by contrast 

 the moral value of logical method, and illustrates 

 the great dangers of inono-ideism, and of that 

 unchecked imagination which has prepareii so 

 many victims to the snares of a mad symbolism. 



The compaeative intensity of sensations. — 

 M. Bloch has compared the relative strength of 

 sensations by finding which of two exactly 

 simultaneous sensations is perceived first. He 

 first had a bell struck and a white paper appear 

 nearly at the same time, and found, that, if the 

 sound comes ^^ of a second before the white 

 streak, one heard before one saw. If the two are 

 still closer together, they seem to be siamltane- 

 ous, and remain so until the streak is g\ of a sec- 

 ond before the sound, when the sight precedes 

 hearing ; so that within these limits Q^ of a sec- 

 ond before, and -g^ of a second after) there is prac- 

 tical simultaneity. From this is calculated tbat 

 it takes ^V of a second longer to hear a sound than 

 to see a sight. From a similar series of experi- 

 ments it was found that it took J^ of a second 

 longer to feel a touch than to see a sight ; so that 

 the order of intensity — meaning by this the 

 power a sensation has to attract attention and get 

 first into consciousness — is sight, hearing, touch. 



The blind in China. — Mr. W, H. Murray, an 

 Englishman, has been the means of introducing 

 into China a system of writing the Chinese charac- 

 ters in raised print. When we consider the com- 

 plexity and multitude (about four thousand) of 

 Chinese characters, and remember that the small- 

 est of China's eighteen provinces is equal in ex- 



