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SIR WILLIAM CROOKES ON PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.
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are as yet ignorant what are the functions of vibrations
of the rates just mentioned. But that they have some
function it is fair to suppose.
Now we approach the region of light, the steps extending
from the forty-fifth to between the fiftieth and the
fifty-first, and the vibrations extending from
35,184372,088832 per second (heat rays) to
1875,000000,000000 per second, the highest recorded rays
of the spectrum. The actual sensation of light, and
therefore the vibrations which transmit visible signs,
being comprised between the narrow limits of about
450,000000,000000 (red light) and 750,000000,000000
(violet, light)-less than one step.
Leaving the region of visible light we arrive at what is,
for our existing senses and our means of research, another
unknown region, the functions of which we are beginning to
suspect. It is not unlikely that the X-rays of Professor
Röntgen will be found to lie between the fifty-eighth
and the sixty-first step, having vibrations extending from
288220,576151,711744 to 2,305763,009213,693952 per second,
or even higher.
In this series it will be seen there are two great gaps,
or unknown regions, concerning which we must own our
entire ignorance as to the part they play in the economy
of creation. Further, whether any vibrations exist having
a greater number per second than those classes mentioned
we do not presume to decide.
But is it premature to ask in what way are vibrations
connected with thought or its transmission? We might
speculate that the increasing rapidity or frequency of the
vibrations would accompany a rise in the importance of the
functions of such vibrations. That high frequency deprives
the rays of many attributes that might seem incompatible
with "brain waves" is undoubted. Thus, rays about the
sixty-second step are so minute as to cease to be
refracted, reflected, or polarized; they pass through many
so-called opaque bodies, and research begins to show that
the most rapid are just those which pass most easily
through dense substances. It does not require much stretch
of the scientific imagination to conceive that at the
sixty-second or sixty-third step the trammels from which
rays at the sixty-first step were struggling to free
themselves have ceased to influence rays having so
enormous a rate of vibration as 9,223052,036854,775808 per
second, and that these rays pierce the densest medium with
scarcely any diminution of intensity, and pass almost
unrefracted and unreflected along their path with the
velocity of light.
Ordinarily we communicate intelligence to each other by
speech. I first call up in my own brain a picture of a
scene I wish to describe, and then, by means of an orderly
transmission of wave vibrations set in motion by my vocal
chords through the material atmosphere, a corresponding
picture is implanted in the brain of anyone whose ear is
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capable of
receiving such vibrations. If the scene I wish to impress on
the brain of the recipient is of a complicated character, or
if the picture of it in my own brain is not definite, the
transmission will be more or less imperfect; but if I wish
to get my audience to picture to themselves some very simple
object, such as a triangle or a circle, the transmission of
ideas will be well-nigh perfect, and equally clear to the
brains of both transmitter and recipient. Here we use the
vibrations of the material molecules of the atmosphere to
transmit intelligence from one brain to another.
In the newly discovered Röntgen rays we are introduced
to an order of vibrations of extremist minuteness as
compared with the most minute waves with which we have
hitherto been acquainted, and of dimensions comparable with
the distances between the centers of the atoms of which the
material universe is built up; and there is no reason to
suppose that we have here reached the limit of frequency.
Waves of this character cease to have many of the properties
associated with light waves. They are produced in the same
ethereal medium, and are probably propagated with the same
velocity as light, but here the similarity ends. They can
not be regularly reflected from polished surfaces; they have
not been polarized; they are not refracted on passing from
one medium to another of different density, and they
penetrate considerable thicknesses of substances opaque to
light with the same ease with which light passes through
glass. It is also demonstrated that these rays, as generated
in the vacuum tube, are not homogeneous, but consist of
bundles of different wave-lengths, analogous to what would
be differences of color could ,"We see them as light. Some
pass easily through flesh, but are partially arrested by
bone, while others pass with almost equal facility through
bone and flesh.
It seems to me that in these rays we may have a possible
mode of transmitting inte1ligence which, with a few
reasonable postulates, may supply a key to much that is
obscure in psychical research. Let it be assumed that these
rays, or rays even of higher frequency, can pass into the
brain and act on some nervous center there. Let it be
conceived that the brain contains a center which uses these
rays as the vocal chords use sound vibrations (both being
under the command of intelligence), and sends them out, with
the velocity of light, to impinge on the receiving ganglion
of another brain. In this way some, at least, of the
phenomena of telepathy, and the transmission of intelligence
from one sensitive to another through long distances, seem
to come into the domain of law and can be grasped. A
sensitive may be one who possesses the telepathic
transmitting or receiving ganglion in an advanced state of
development, or who, by constant practice, is rendered more
sensitive to these high-frequency waves. Experience seems to
show that the receiving and the transmitting ganglions are
not equally developed; one may be active, while the other,
like the
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pineal eye
in man, may be only vestigial. By such an hypothesis no
physical laws are violated; neither is it necessary to
invoke what is commonly called the supernatural.
To this hypothesis it may be objected that brain waves, like
any other waves, must obey physical laws. Therefore,
transmission of thought must be easier or more certain the
nearer the agent and recipient are to each other, and should
die out altogether before great distances are reached. Also
it can be urged that if brain waves diffuse in all
directions they should affect all sensitives within their
radius of action, instead of impressing only one brain. The
electric telegraph is not a parallel case, for there a
material wire intervenes to conduct and guide the energy to
its destination.
These are weighty objections, but not, I think,
insurmountable. Far be it from me to say anything
disrespectful of the law of inverse squares, but I have
already endeavored to show we are dealing with conditions
removed from ow' material and limited conceptions of space,
matter, form. Is it inconceivable that intense thought
concentrated toward a sensitive with whom the thinker is in
close sympathy may induce a telepathic chain of brain waves,
along which the message of thought can go straight to its
goal without loss of energy due to distance? And is it also
inconceivable that our mundane ideas of space and distance
may be superseded in these subtle regions of unsubstantial
thought, where "near" and "far" may lose their usual
meaning?
I repeat that this speculation is strictly provisional. I
dare to suggest it. The time may come when it will be
possible to submit it to experimental tests.
I am impelled to one further reflection, dealing with the
conservation of energy. We say, with truth, that energy is
transformed but not destroyed, and that whenever we can
trace the transformation we find it quantitatively exact. So
far as our very rough exactness goes, this is true for
inorganic matter and for mechanical forces. But it is only
inferentially true for organized matter and for vital
forces. We can not express life in terms of heat or of
motion. And thus it happens that just when the exact
transformation of energy will be most interesting to watch,
we can not really tell whether any fresh energy has been
introduced into the system or not. Let us consider this a
little more closely.
It has, of course, always been realized by physicists, and
has been especially pointed out by Dr. Croll, that there is
a wide difference between the production of motion and the
direction of it into a particular channel. The production of
motion, molar or molecular, is governed by physical laws,
which it is the business of the philosopher to find out and
correlate. The law of the conservation of energy overrides
all laws, and it is a preeminent canon of scientific belief
that for every act done a corresponding expenditure of
energy must be transformed.
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No work can
be effected without using up a corresponding value in energy
of another kind. But to us the other side of the problem is
even of more importance. Granted the existence of a certain
kind of molecular motion, what is it that determines its
direction along one path rather than another? A weight falls
to the earth through a distance of 3 feet. I lift it, and
let it fall once more. In these movements of the weight a
certain amount of energy is expended in its rise and the
same amount is liberated in its fall. But instead of letting
the weight fall free, suppose I harness it to a complicated
system of wheels, and, instead of letting the weight fall in
the fraction of a second, I distribute its fall over
twenty-four hours. No more energy is expended in raising the
weight, and in its slow fall no more or less energy is
developed than when it fell free; but I have made it do work
of another kind. It now drives a clock, a telescope, or a
philosophic instrument, and does what we call useful work.
The clock runs down. I lift the weight by exerting the
proper amount of energy, and in this action the law of
conservation of energy is strictly obeyed. But now I have
the choice of either letting the weight fall free in a
fraction of a second, or, constrained by the wheelwork, in
twenty-four hours. I can do which I like, and whichever way
I decide, no more energy is developed in the fall of the
weight. I strike a match; I can use it to light a cigarette
or to set fire to a house. I write a telegram; it may be
simply to say I shall be late for dinner, or it may produce
fluctuations on the stock exchange that will ruin thousands.
In these cases the actual force required in striking the
match or in writing the telegram is governed by the law or
conservation of energy; but the vastly more momentous part,
which determines the words I use or the material I ignite,
is beyond such a law. It is probable that no expenditure of
energy need be used in the determination of direction one
way more than another. Intelligence and free will here come
into play, and these mystic forces are outside the law of
conservation of energy as understood by physicists.
The whole universe, as we see it, is the result of molecular
movement. Molecular movements strictly obey the law of
conservation of energy, but what we call "law" is simply an
expression of the direction along which a form of energy
acts, not the form of energy itself. We may explain
molecular and molar motions, and discover all the physical
laws of motion, but we shall be far as ever from a solution
of the vastly more important question as to what form of
will and intellect is behind the motions of molecules,
guiding and constraining them in definite directions along
predetermined paths. What is the determining cause in the
background? What combination of will and intellect outside
our physical laws guides the fortuitous concourse of atoms
along ordered paths culminating in the material world in
which we live?
In these last sentences I have intentionally used words of
wide
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signification-have spoken of guidance along ordered paths.
It is wisdom to be vague here, for we absolutely can not say
whether or when any diversion may be introduced into the
existing system of earthly forces by an external power. We
can no more be certain that this is not so than I can be
certain, in an express train, that no signal man has pressed
a handle to direct the train on to this or that line of
rails. I may compute exactly how much coal is used per mile,
so as to be able to say at any minute how many miles we have
traveled, but, unless I actually see the points, I can not
tell whether they are shifted before the train passes.
An omnipotent being could rule the course of this world in
such a way that none of us should discover the hidden
springs of action. He need not make the sun stand still upon
Gibeon. He could do all that he wanted by the expenditure of
infinitesimal diverting force upon ultra microscopic
modifications of the human germ.
In this address I have not attempted to add any item to the
sound knowledge which I believe our society is gradually
amassing. I shall be content if I have helped to clear away
some of those scientific stumbling blocks, if I may so call
them, which tend to prevent many of our possible coadjutors
from adventuring themselves on the new illimitable road.
I see no good reason why any man of scientific mind should
shut his eyes to our work or deliberately stand aloof from
it. Our Proceedings are, of course, not exactly parallel to
the Proceedings of a society dealing with a long-established
branch of science. In every form of research there must be a
beginning. We own to much that is tentative, much that may
turn out erroneous. But it is thus, and thus only, that each
science in turn takes its stand. I venture to assert that
both in actual careful record of new and important facts,
and in suggestiveness, our society's work and publications
will form no unworthy preface to a profounder science both
of man, of nature, and of "worlds not realized" than this
planet has yet known. |
