Isis Unveiled

It is erroneous to speak of a medium having powers developed. A passive medium has no power. He has a certain moral and physical condition which induces emanations, or an aura, in which his controlling intelligences can live, and by which they manifest themselves. He is only the vehicle through which they display their power. This aura varies day by day, and, as would appear from Mr. Crookes’ experiments, even hour by hour. It is an external effect resulting from interior causes. The medium’s moral state determines the kind of spirits that come; and the spirits that come reciprocally influence the medium, intellectually, physically, and morally. The perfection of his mediumship is in ratio to his passivity, and the danger he incurs is in equal degree. When he is fully “developed” perfectly passive—his own astral spirit may be benumbed, and even crowded out of his body, which is then occupied by an elemental, or, what is worse, by a human fiend of the eighth sphere, who proceeds to use it as his own. But too often the cause of the most celebrated crime is to be sought in such possessions.

Physical mediumship depending upon passivity, its antidote suggests itself naturally; let the medium cease being passive. Spirits never control persons of positive character who are determined to resist all extraneous influences. The weak and feeble-minded whom they can make their victims they drive into vice. If these miracle-making elementals and disembodied devils called elementary were indeed the guardian angels that they have passed for, these last thirty years, why have they not given their faithful mediums at least good health and domestic happiness? Why do they desert them at the most critical moments of trial when under accusations of fraud? It is notorious that the best physical mediums are either sickly or, sometimes, what is still worse, inclined to some abnormal vice or other. Why do not these healing “guides,” who make their mediums play the therapeutists and thaumaturgists to others, give them the boon of robust physical vigor? The ancient thaumaturgist and apostle, generally, if not invariably, enjoyed good health; their magnetism never conveyed to the sick patient any physical or moral taint; and they never were accused of VAMPIRISM, which a spiritual paper very justly charges upon some medium-healers.

If we apply the above law of mediumship and mediatorship to the subject of levitation, with which we opened our present discussion, what shall we find? Here we have a medium and one of the mediator-class levitated—the former at a seance, the latter at prayer, or in ecstatic contemplation. The medium being passive must be lifted up; the ecstatic being active must levitate himself. The former is elevated by his familiar spirits—whoever or whatever they may be—the latter, by the power of his own aspiring soul. Can both be indiscriminately termed mediums?

But nevertheless we may be answered that the same phenomena are produced in the presence of a modern medium as of an ancient saint. Undoubtedly; and so it was in the days of Moses; for we believe that the triumph claimed for him in Exodus over Pharaoh’s magicians is simply a national boast on the part of the “chosen people.” That the power which produced his phenomena produced that of the magicians also, who were moreover the first tutors of Moses and instructed him in their “wisdom,” is most probable. But even in those days they seemed to have well appreciated the difference between phenomena apparently identical. The tutelar national deity of the Hebrews (who is not the Highest Father) forbids expressly, in Deuteronomy, his people “to learn to do after the abominations of other nations.... To pass through the fire, or use divination, or be an observer of times or an enchanter, or a witch, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a necromancer.”

What difference was there then between all the above-enumerated phenomena as performed by the “other nations” and when enacted by the prophets? Evidently, there was some good reason for it; and we find it in John’s First Epistle, iv., which says: “believe not every spirit, but try the spirits, whether they are of God, because many false prophets are gone out into the world.” The only standard within the reach of spiritualists and present-day mediums by which they can try the spirits, is to judge 1, by their actions and speech; 2, by their readiness to manifest themselves; and 3, whether the object in view is worthy of the apparition of a “disembodied” spirit, or can excuse any one for disturbing the dead. Saul was on the eve of destruction, himself and his sons, yet Samuel inquired of him: “Why hast thou disquieted me, to bring me up?” But the “intelligences” that visit the circle-rooms, come at the beck of every trifler who would while away a tedious hour. In the number of the London Spiritualist for July 14th, we find a long article, in which the author seeks to prove that “the marvellous wonders of the present day, which belong to so-called modern spiritualism, are identical in character with the experiences of the patriarchs and apostles of old.”

We are forced to contradict, point-blank, such an assertion. They are identical only so far that the same forces and occult powers of nature produce them. But though these powers and forces may be, and most assuredly are, all directed by unseen intelligences, the latter differ more in essence, character, and purposes than mankind itself, composed, as it now stands, of white, black, brown, red, and yellow men, and numbering saints and criminals, geniuses and idiots. The writer may avail himself of the services of a tame orang-outang or a South Sea islander; but the fact alone that he has a servant makes neither the latter nor himself identical with Aristotle and Alexander. The writer compares Ezekiel “lifted up” and taken into the “east gate of the Lord’s house,” with the levitations of certain mediums, and the three Hebrew youths in the “burning fiery furnace,” with other fire-proof mediums; the John King “spirit-light” is assimilated with the “burning lamp” of Abraham; and finally, after many such comparisons, the case of the Davenport Brothers, released from the jail of Oswego, is confronted with that of Peter delivered from prison by the “angel of the Lord!”

Now, except the story of Saul and Samuel, there is not a case instanced in the Bible of the “evocation of the dead.” As to being lawful, the assertion is contradicted by every prophet. Moses issues a decree of death against those who raise the spirits of the dead, the “necromancers.” Nowhere throughout the Old Testament, nor in Homer, nor Virgil is communion with the dead termed otherwise than necromancy. Philo Judæus makes Saul say, that if he banishes from the land every diviner and necromancer his name will survive him.

One of the greatest reasons for it was the doctrine of the ancients, that no soul from the “abode of the blessed” will return to earth, unless, indeed, upon rare occasions its apparition might be required to accomplish some great object in view, and so bring benefit upon humanity. In this latter instance the “soul” has no need to be evoked. It sent its portentous message either by an evanescent simulacrum of itself, or through messengers, who could appear in material form, and personate faithfully the departed. The souls that could so easily be evoked were deemed neither safe nor useful to commune with. They were the souls, or larvæ rather, from the infernal region of the limbo—the sheol, the region known by the kabalists as the eighth sphere, but far different from the orthodox Hell or Hades of the ancient mythologists. Horace describes this evocation and the ceremonial accompanying it, and Maimonides gives us particulars of the Jewish rite. Every necromantic ceremony was performed on high places and hills, and blood was used for the purpose of placating these human ghouls.

“I cannot prevent the witches from picking up their bones,” says the poet. “See the blood they pour in the ditch to allure the souls that will utter their oracles!” “Cruor in fossam confusus, ut inde manes elicirent, animas responsa daturas.” “The souls,” says Porphyry, “prefer, to everything else, freshly-spilt blood, which seems for a short time to restore to them some of the faculties of life.” As for materializations, they are many and various in the sacred records. But, were they effected under the same conditions as at modern seances? Darkness, it appears, was not required in those days of patriarchs and magic powers. The three angels who appeared to Abraham drank in the full blaze of the sun, for “he sat in the tent-door in the heat of the day,” says the book of Genesis. The spirits of Elias and Moses appeared equally in daytime, as it is not probable that Christ and the Apostles would be climbing a high mountain during the night. Jesus is represented as having appeared to Mary Magdalene in the garden in the early morning; to the Apostles, at three distinct times, and generally by day; once “when the morning was come” (John xxi. 4). Even when the ass of Balaam saw the “materialized” angel, it was in the full light of noon.

We are fully prepared to agree with the writer in question, that we find in the life of Christ—and we may add in the Old Testament, too— too—“an uninterrupted record of spiritualistic manifestations,” but nothing mediumistic, of a physical character though, if we except the visit of Saul to Sedecla, the Obeah woman of En-Dor. This is a distinction of vital importance. True, the promise of the Master was clearly stated: “Aye, and greater works than these shall ye do” works of mediatorship. According to Joel, the time would come when there would be an outpouring of the divine spirit: “Your sons and your daughters,” says he, “shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.” The time has come and they do all these things now; Spiritualism has its seers and martyrs, its prophets and healers. Like Moses, and David, and Jehoram, there are mediums who have direct writings from genuine planetary and human spirits; and the best of it brings the mediums no pecuniary recompense. The greatest friend of the cause in France, Leymarie, now languishes in a prison-cell, and, as he says with touching pathos, is “no longer a man, but a number” on the prison register.

There are a few, a very few, orators on the spiritualistic platform who speak by inspiration, and if they know what is said at all they are in the condition described by Daniel: “And I retained no strength. Yet heard I the voice of his words: and when I heard the voice of his words, then was I in a deep sleep.” And there are mediums, these whom we have spoken of, for whom the prophecy in Samuel might have been written: “The spirit of the Lord will come upon thee, thou shalt prophesy with them, and shalt be turned into another man.” But where, in the long line of Bible-wonders, do we read of flying guitars, and tinkling tambourines, and jangling bells being offered in pitch-dark rooms as evidences of immortality?

When Christ was accused of casting out devils by the power of Beelzebub, he denied it, and sharply retorted by asking, “By whom do your sons or disciples cast them out?” Again, spiritualists affirm that Jesus was a medium, that he was controlled by one or many spirits; but when the charge was made to him direct he said that he was nothing of the kind. “Say we not well, that thou art a Samaritan, and hast a devil?” daimonion, an Obeah, or familiar spirit in the Hebrew text. Jesus answered, “I have not a devil.”

The writer from whom we have above quoted, attempts also a parallel between the aerial flights of Philip and Ezekiel and of Mrs. Guppy and other modern mediums. He is ignorant or oblivious of the fact that while levitation occurred as an effect in both classes of cases, the producing causes were totally dissimilar. The nature of this difference we have adverted to already. Levitation may be produced consciously or unconsciously to the subject. The juggler determines beforehand that he will be levitated, for how long a time, and to what height; he regulates the occult forces accordingly. The fakir produces the same effect by the power of his aspiration and will, and, except when in the ecstatic state, keeps control over his movements. So does the priest of Siam, when, in the sacred pagoda, he mounts fifty feet in the air with taper in hand, and flits from idol to idol, lighting up the niches, self-supported, and stepping as confidently as though he were upon solid ground. This, persons have seen and testify to. The officers of the Russian squadron which recently circumnavigated the globe, and was stationed for a long time in Japanese waters, relate the fact that, besides many other marvels, they saw jugglers walk in mid-air from tree-top to tree-top, without the slightest support. They also saw the pole and tape-climbing feats, described by Colonel Olcott in his People from the Other World, and which have been so much called in question by certain spiritualists and mediums whose zeal is greater than their learning. The quotations from Col. Yule and other writers, elsewhere given in this work, seem to place the matter beyond doubt that these effects are produced.

Such phenomena, when occurring apart from religious rites, in India, Japan, Thibet, Siam, and other “heathen” countries, phenomena a hundred times more various and astounding than ever seen in civilized Europe or America, are never attributed to the spirits of the departed. The Pitris have naught to do with such public exhibitions. And we have but to consult the list of the principal demons or elemental spirits to find that their very names indicate their professions, or, to express it clearly, the tricks to which each variety is best adapted. So we have the Mâdan, a generic name indicating wicked elemental spirits, half brutes, half monsters, for Mâdan signifies one that looks like a cow. He is the friend of the malicious sorcerers and helps them to effect their evil purposes of revenge by striking men and cattle with sudden illness and death.

The Shudâla-Mâdan, or graveyard fiend, answers to our ghouls. He delights where crime and murder were committed, near burial-spots and places of execution. He helps the juggler in all the fire-phenomena as well as Kutti Shâttan, the little juggling imps. Shudâla, they say, is a half-fire, half-water demon, for he received from Siva permission to assume any shape he chose, transform one thing into another; and when he is not in fire, he is in water. It is he who blinds people “to see that which they do not see.” Shûla Mâdan, is another mischievous spook. He is the furnace-demon, skilled in pottery and baking. If you keep friends with him, he will not injure you; but woe to him who incurs his wrath. Shûla likes compliments and flattery, and as he generally keeps underground it is to him that a juggler must look to help him raise a tree from a seed in a quarter of an hour and ripen its fruit.

Kumil-Mâdan, is the undine proper. He is an elemental spirit of the water, and his name means blowing like a bubble. He is a very merry imp; and will help a friend in anything relative to his department; he will shower rain and show the future and the present to those who will resort to hydromancy or divination by water. Poruthû Mâdan, is the “wrestling” demon; he is the strongest of all; and whenever there are feats shown in which physical force is required, such as levitations, or taming of wild animals, he will help the performer by keeping him above the soil or will overpower a wild beast before the tamer has time to utter his incantation. So, every “physical manifestation” has its own class of elemental spirits to superintend them.

Returning now to levitations of human bodies and inanimate bodies, in modern circle-rooms, we must refer the reader to the Introductory chapter of this work. (See “Æthrobasy.”) In connection with the story of Simon the Magician, we have shown the explanation of the ancients as to how the levitation and transport of heavy bodies could be produced. We will now try and suggest a hypothesis for the same in relation to mediums, i. e., persons supposed to be unconscious at the moment of the phenomena, which the believers claim to be produced by disembodied “spirits.” We need not repeat that which has been sufficiently explained before. Conscious æthrobasy under magneto-electrical conditions is possible only to adepts who can never be overpowered by an influence foreign to themselves, but remain sole masters of their WILL.

Thus levitation, we will say, must always occur in obedience to law—a law as inexorable as that which makes a body unaffected by it remain upon the ground. And where should we seek for that law outside of the theory of molecular attraction? It is a scientific hypothesis that the form of force which first brings nebulous or star matter together into a whirling vortex is electricity; and modern chemistry is being totally reconstructed upon the theory of electric polarities of atoms. The waterspout, the tornado, the whirlwind, the cyclone, and the hurricane, are all doubtless the result of electrical action. This phenomenon has been studied from above as well as from below, observations having been made both upon the ground and from a balloon floating above the vortex of a thunder-storm.

Observe now, that this force, under the conditions of a dry and warm atmosphere at the earth’s surface, can accumulate a dynamic energy capable of lifting enormous bodies of water, of compressing the particles of atmosphere, and of sweeping across a country, tearing up forests, lifting rocks, and scattering buildings in fragments over the ground. Wild’s electric machine causes induced currents of magneto-electricity so enormously powerful as to produce light by which small print may be read, on a dark night, at a distance of two miles from the place where it is operating.

As long ago as the year 1600, Gilbert, in his De Magnete, enunciated the principle that the globe itself is one vast magnet, and some of our advanced electricians are now beginning to realize that man, too, possesses this property, and that the mutual attractions and repulsions of individuals toward each other may at least in part find their explanation in this fact. The experience of attendants upon spiritualistic circles corroborates this opinion. Says Professor Nicholas Wagner, of the University of St. Petersburg: “Heat, or perhaps the electricity of the investigators sitting in the circle, must concentrate itself in the table and gradually develop into motions. At the same time, or a little afterward, the psychical force unites to assist the two other powers. By psychical force, I mean that which evolves itself out of all the other forces of our organism. The combination into one general something of several separate forces, and capable, when combined, of manifesting itself in degree, according to the individuality.” The progress of the phenomena he considers to be affected by the cold or the dryness of the atmosphere. Now, remembering what has been said as to the subtler forms of energy which the Hermetists have proved to exist in nature, and accepting the hypothesis enunciated by Mr. Wagner that “the power which calls out these manifestations is centred in the mediums,” may not the medium, by furnishing in himself a nucleus as perfect in its way as the system of permanent steel magnets in Wild’s battery, produce astral currents sufficiently strong to lift in their vortex a body even as ponderable as a human form? It is not necessary that the object lifted should assume a gyratory motion, for the phenomenon we are observing, unlike the whirlwind, is directed by an intelligence, which is capable of keeping the body to be raised within the ascending current and preventing its rotation.

Levitation in this case would be a purely mechanical phenomenon. The inert body of the passive medium is lifted by a vortex created either by the elemental spirits—possibly, in some cases, by human ones, and sometimes through purely morbific causes, as in the cases of Professor Perty’s sick somnambules. The levitation of the adept is, on the contrary, a magneto-electric effect, as we have just stated. He has made the polarity of his body opposite to that of the atmosphere, and identical with that of the earth; hence, attractable by the former, retaining his consciousness the while. A like phenomenal levitation is possible, also, when disease has changed the corporeal polarity of a patient, as disease always does in a greater or lesser degree. But, in such case, the lifted person would not be likely to remain conscious.

In one series of observations upon whirlwinds, made in 1859, in the basin of the Rocky Mountains, “a newspaper was caught up ... to a height of some two hundred feet; and there it oscillated to and fro across the track for some considerable time, whilst accompanying the onward motion.” Of course scientists will say that a parallel cannot be instituted between this case and that of human levitation; that no vortex can be formed in a room by which a medium could be raised; but this is a question of astral light and spirit, which have their own peculiar dynamical laws. Those who understand the latter, affirm that a concourse of people laboring under mental excitement, which reäcts upon the physical system, throw off electro-magnetic emanations, which, when sufficiently intense, can throw the whole circumambient atmosphere into perturbation. Force enough may actually be generated to create an electrical vortex, sufficiently powerful to produce many a strange phenomenon. With this hint, the whirling of the dervishes, and the wild dances, swayings, gesticulations, music, and shouts of devotees will be understood as all having a common object in view—namely, the creation of such astral conditions as favor psychological and physical phenomena. The rationale of religious revivals will also be better understood if this principle is borne in mind.

But there is still another point to be considered. If the medium is a nucleus of magnetism and a conductor of that force, he would be subject to the same laws as a metallic conductor, and be attracted to his magnet. If, therefore, a magnetic centre of the requisite power was formed directly over him by the unseen powers presiding over the manifestations, why should not his body be lifted toward it, despite terrestrial gravity? We know that, in the case of a medium who is unconscious of the progress of the operation, it is necessary to first admit the fact of such an intelligence, and next, the possibility of the experiment being conducted as described; but, in view of the multifarious evidences offered, not only in our own researches, which claim no authority, but also in those of Mr. Crookes, and a great number of others, in many lands and at different epochs, we shall not turn aside from the main object of offering this hypothesis in the profitless endeavor to strengthen a case which scientific men will not consider with patience, even when sanctioned by the most distinguished of their own body.

As early as 1836, the public was apprised of certain phenomena which were as extraordinary, if not more so than all the manifestations which are produced in our days. The famous correspondence between two well-known mesmerizers, Deleuze and Billot, was published in France, and the wonders discussed for a time in every society. Billot firmly believed in the apparition of spirits, for, as he says, he has both seen, heard, and felt them. Deleuze was as much convinced of this truth as Billot, and declared that man’s immortality and the return of the dead, or rather of their shadows, was the best demonstrated fact in his opinion. Material objects were brought to him from distant places by invisible hands, and he communicated on most important subjects with the invisible intelligences. “In regard to this,” he remarks, “I cannot conceive how spiritual beings are able to carry material objects.” More skeptical, less intuitional than Billot, nevertheless, he agreed with the latter that “the question of spiritualism is not one of opinions, but of facts.”

Such is precisely the conclusion to which Professor Wagner, of St. Petersburg, was finally driven. In the second pamphlet on Mediumistic Phenomena, issued by him in December, 1875, he administers the following rebuke to Mr. Shkliarevsky, one of his materialistic critics: “So long as the spiritual manifestations were weak and sporadic, we men of science could afford to deceive ourselves with theories of unconscious muscular action, or unconscious cerebrations of our brains, and tumble the rest into one heap as juggleries.... But now these wonders have grown too striking; the spirits show themselves in the shape of tangible, materialized forms, which can be touched and handled at will by any learned skeptic like yourself, and even be weighed and measured. We can struggle no longer, for every resistance becomes absurd—it threatens lunacy. Try then to realize this, and to humble yourself before the possibility of impossible facts.”

Iron is only magnetized temporarily, but steel permanently, by contact with the lodestone. Now steel is but iron which has passed through a carbonizing process, and yet that process has quite changed the nature of the metal, so far as its relations to the lodestone are concerned. In like manner, it may be said that the medium is but an ordinary person who is magnetized by influx from the astral light; and as the permanence of the magnetic property in the metal is measured by its more or less steel-like character, so may we not say that the intensity and permanency of mediumistic power is in proportion to the saturation of the medium with the magnetic or astral force?

This condition of saturation may be congenital, or brought about in any one of these ways:—by the mesmeric process; by spirit-agency; or by self-will. Moreover, the condition seems hereditable, like any other physical or mental peculiarity; many, and we may even say most great mediums having had mediumship exhibited in some form by one or more progenitors. Mesmeric subjects easily pass into the higher forms of clairvoyance and mediumship (now so called), as Gregory, Deleuze, Puysegur, Du Potet, and other authorities inform us. As to the process of self-saturation, we have only to turn to the account of the priestly devotees of Japan, Siam, China, India, Thibet, and Egypt, as well as of European countries, to be satisfied of its reality. Long persistence in a fixed determination to subjugate matter, brings about a condition in which not only is one insensible to external impressions, but even death itself may be simulated, as we have already seen. The ecstatic so enormously reïnforces his will-power, as to draw into himself, as into a vortex, the potencies resident in the astral light to supplement his own natural store.

The phenomena of mesmerism are explicable upon no other hypothesis than the projection of a current of force from the operator into the subject. If a man can project this force by an exercise of the will, what prevents his attracting it toward himself by reversing the current? Unless, indeed, it be urged that the force is generated within his body and cannot be attracted from any supply without. But even under such an hypothesis, if he can generate a superabundant supply to saturate another person, or even an inanimate object by his will, why cannot he generate it in excess for self-saturation?

In his work on Anthropology, Professor J. R. Buchanan notes the tendency of the natural gestures to follow the direction of the phrenological organs; the attitude of combativeness being downward and backward; that of hope and spirituality upward and forward; that of firmness upward and backward; and so on. The adepts of Hermetic science know this principle so well that they explain the levitation of their own bodies, whenever it happens unawares, by saying that the thought is so intently fixed upon a point above them, that when the body is thoroughly imbued with the astral influence, it follows the mental aspiration and rises into the air as easily as a cork held beneath the water rises to the surface when its buoyancy is allowed to assert itself. The giddiness felt by certain persons when standing upon the brink of a chasm is explained upon the same principle. Young children, who have little or no active imagination, and in whom experience has not had sufficient time to develop fear, are seldom, if ever, giddy; but the adult of a certain mental temperament, seeing the chasm and picturing in his imaginative fancy the consequences of a fall, allows himself to be drawn by the attraction of the earth, and unless the spell of fascination be broken, his body will follow his thought to the foot of the precipice.

That this giddiness is purely a temperamental affair, is shown in the fact that some persons never experience the sensation, and inquiry will probably reveal the fact that such are deficient in the imaginative faculty. We have a case in view—a gentleman who, in 1858, had so firm a nerve that he horrified the witnesses by standing upon the coping of the Arc de Triomphe, in Paris, with folded arms, and his feet half over the edge; but, having since become short-sighted, was taken with a panic upon attempting to cross a plank-walk over the courtyard of a hotel, where the footway was more than two feet and a half wide, and there was no danger. He looked at the flagging below, gave his fancy free play, and would have fallen had he not quickly sat down.

It is a dogma of science that perpetual motion is impossible; it is another dogma, that the allegation that the Hermetists discovered the elixir of life, and that certain of them, by partaking of it, prolonged their existence far beyond the usual term, is a superstitious absurdity. And the claim that the baser metals have been transmuted into gold, and that the universal solvent was discovered, excites only contemptuous derision in a century which has crowned the edifice of philosophy with a copestone of protoplasm. The first is declared a physical impossibility; as much so, according to Babinet, the astronomer, as the “levitation of an object without contact;” the second, a physiological vagary begotten of a disordered mind; the third, a chemical absurdity.

Balfour Stewart says that while the man of science cannot assert that “he is intimately acquainted with all the forces of nature, and cannot prove that perpetual motion is impossible; for, in truth, he knows very little of these forces ... he does think that he has entered into the spirit and design of nature, and therefore he denies at once the possibility of such a machine.” If he has discovered the design of nature, he certainly has not the spirit, for he denies its existence in one sense; and denying spirit he prevents that perfect understanding of universal law which would redeem modern philosophy from its thousand mortifying dilemmas and mistakes. If Professor B. Stewart’s negation is founded upon no better analogy than that of his French contemporary, Babinet, he is in danger of a like humiliating catastrophe. The universe itself illustrates the actuality of perpetual motion; and the atomic theory, which has proved such a balm to the exhausted minds of our cosmic explorers, is based upon it. The telescope searching through space, and the microscope probing the mysteries of the little world in a drop of water, reveal the same law in operation; and, as everything below is like everything above, who would presume to say that when the conservation of energy is better understood, and the two additional forces of the kabalists are added to the catalogue of orthodox science, it may not be discovered how to construct a machine which shall run without friction and supply itself with energy in proportion to its wastes?

“Fifty years ago,” says the venerable Mr. de Lara, “a Hamburg paper, quoting from an English one an account of the opening of the Manchester and Liverpool Railway, pronounced it a gross fabrication; capping the climax by saying, ‘even so far extends the credulity of the English;’” the moral is apparent. The recent discovery of the compound called METALLINE, by an American chemist, makes it appear probable that friction can, in a large degree, be overcome. One thing is certain, when a man shall have discovered the perpetual motion he will be able to understand by analogy all the secrets of nature; progress in direct ratio with resistance.

We may say the same of the elixir of life, by which is understood physical life, the soul being of course deathless only by reason of its divine immortal union with spirit. But continual or perpetual does not mean endless. The kabalists have never claimed that either an endless physical life or unending motion is possible. The Hermetic axiom maintains that only the First Cause and its direct emanations, our spirits (scintillas from the eternal central sun which will be reäbsorbed by it at the end of time) are incorruptible and eternal. But, in possession of a knowledge of occult natural forces, yet undiscovered by the materialists, they asserted that both physical life and mechanical motion could be prolonged indefinitely. The philosophers’ stone had more than one meaning attached to its mysterious origin. Says Professor Wilder: “The study of alchemy was even more universal than the several writers upon it appear to have known, and was always the auxiliary, if not identical with, the occult sciences of magic, necromancy, and astrology; probably from the same fact that they were originally but forms of a spiritualism which was generally extant in all ages of human history.”

Our greatest wonder is, that the very men who view the human body simply as a “digesting machine,” should object to the idea that if some equivalent for metalline could be applied between its molecules, it should run without friction. Man’s body is taken from the earth, or dust, according to Genesis; which allegory bars the claims of modern analysts to original discovery of the nature of the inorganic constituents of human body. If the author of Genesis knew this, and Aristotle taught the identity between the life-principle of plants, animals, and men, our affiliation with mother earth seems to have been settled long ago.

Elie de Beaumont has recently reasserted the old doctrine of Hermes that there is a terrestrial circulation comparable to that of the blood of man. Now, since it is a doctrine as old as time, that nature is continually renewing her wasted energies by absorption from the source of energy, why should the child differ from the parent? Why may not man, by discovering the source and nature of this recuperative energy, extract from the earth herself the juice or quintessence with which to replenish his own forces? This may have been the great secret of the alchemists. Stop the circulation of the terrestrial fluids and we have stagnation, putrefaction, death; stop the circulation of the fluids in man, and stagnation, absorption, calcification from old age, and death ensue. If the alchemists had simply discovered some chemical compound capable of keeping the channels of our circulation unclogged, would not all the rest easily follow? And why, we ask, if the surface-waters of certain mineral springs have such virtue in the cure of disease and the restoration of physical vigor, is it illogical to say that if we could get the first runnings from the alembic of nature in the bowels of the earth, we might, perhaps, find that the fountain of youth was no myth after all. Jennings asserts that the elixir was produced out of the secret chemical laboratories of nature by some adepts; and Robert Boyle, the chemist, mentions a medicated wine or cordial which Dr. Lefevre tried with wonderful effect upon an old woman.

Alchemy is as old as tradition itself. “The first authentic record on this subject,” says William Godwin, “is an edict of Diocletian, about 300 years after Christ, ordering a diligent search to be made in Egypt for all the ancient books which treated of the art of making gold and silver, that they might be consigned to the flames. This edict necessarily presumes a certain antiquity to the pursuit; and fabulous history has recorded Solomon, Pythagoras, and Hermes among its distinguished votaries.”

And this question of transmutation—this alkahest or universal solvent, which comes next after the elixir vitæ in the order of the three alchemical agents? Is the idea so absurd as to be totally unworthy of consideration in this age of chemical discovery? How shall we dispose of the historical anecdotes of men who actually made gold and gave it away, and of those who testify to having seen them do it? Libavius, Geberus, Arnoldus, Thomas Aquinas, Bernardus Comes, Joannes Penotus, Quercetanus Geber, the Arabian father of European alchemy, Eugenius Philalethes, Baptista Porta, Rubeus, Dornesius, Vogelius, Irenæus Philaletha Cosmopolita, and many mediæval alchemists and Hermetic philosophers assert the fact. Must we believe them all visionaries and lunatics, these otherwise great and learned scholars? Francesco Picus, in his work De Auro, gives eighteen instances of gold being produced in his presence by artificial means; and Thomas Vaughan, going to a goldsmith to sell 1,200 marks worth of gold, when the man suspiciously remarked that the gold was too pure to have ever come out of a mine, ran away, leaving the money behind him. In a preceding chapter we have brought forward the testimony of a number of authors to this effect.

Marco Polo tells us that in some mountains of Thibet, which he calls Chingintalas, there are veins of the substance from which Salamander is made: “For the real truth is, that the salamander is no beast, as they allege in our parts of the world, but is a substance found in the earth.” Then he adds that a Turk of the name of Zurficar, told him that he had been procuring salamanders for the Great Khan, in those regions, for the space of three years. “He said that the way they got them was by digging in that mountain till they found a certain vein. The substance of this vein was then taken and crushed, and, when so treated, it divides, as it were, into fibres of wool, which they set forth to dry. When dry, these fibres were pounded and washed, so as to leave only the fibres, like fibres of wool. These were then spun.... When first made, these napkins are not very white, but, by putting them into the fire for a while, they come out as white as snow.”

Therefore, as several authorities testify, this mineral substance is the famous Asbestos, which the Rev. A. Williamson says is found in Shantung. But, it is not only incombustible thread which is made from it. An oil, having several most extraordinary properties, is extracted from it, and the secret of its virtues remains with certain lamas and Hindu adepts. When rubbed into the body, it leaves no external stain or mark, but, nevertheless, after having been so rubbed, the part can be scrubbed with soap and hot or cold water, without the virtue of the ointment being affected in the least. The person so rubbed may boldly step into the hottest fire; unless suffocated, he will remain uninjured. Another property of the oil is that, when combined with another substance, that we are not at liberty to name, and left stagnant under the rays of the moon, on certain nights indicated by native astrologers, it will breed strange creatures. Infusoria we may call them in one sense, but then these grow and develop. Speaking of Kashmere, Marco Polo observes that they have an astonishing acquaintance with the devilries of enchantment, insomuch that they make their idols to speak.

To this day, the greatest magian mystics of these regions may be found in Kashmere. The various religious sects of this country were always credited with preternatural powers, and were the resort of adepts and sages. As Colonel Yule remarks, “Vambery tells us that even in our day, the Kasmiri dervishes are preëminent among their Mahometan brethren for cunning, secret arts, skill in exorcisms and magic.”

But, all modern chemists are not equally dogmatic in their negation of the possibility of such a transmutation. Dr. Peisse, Desprez, and even the all-denying Louis Figuier, of Paris, seem to be far from rejecting the idea. Dr. Wilder says: “The possibility of reducing the elements to their primal form, as they are supposed to have existed in the igneous mass from which the earth-crust is believed to have been formed, is not considered by physicists to be so absurd an idea as has been intimated. There is a relationship between metals, often so close as to indicate an original identity. Persons called alchemists may, therefore, have devoted their energies to investigations into these matters, as Lavoisier, Davy, Faraday, and others of our day have explained the mysteries of chemistry.” A learned Theosophist, a practicing physician of this country, one who has studied the occult sciences and alchemy for over thirty years, has succeeded in reducing the elements to their primal form, and made what is termed “the pre-Adamite earth.” It appears in the form of an earthy precipitate from pure water, which, on being disturbed, presents the most opalescent and vivid colors.

“The secret,” say the alchemists, as if enjoying the ignorance of the uninitiated, “is an amalgamation of the salt, sulphur, and mercury combined three times in Azoth, by a triple sublimation and a triple fixation.” “How ridiculously absurd!” will exclaim a learned modern chemist. Well, the disciples of the great Hermes understand the above as well as a graduate of Harvard University comprehends the meaning of his Professor of Chemistry, when the latter says: “With one hydroxyl group we can only produce monatomic compounds; use two hydroxyl groups, and we can form around the same skeleton a number of diatomic compounds. ... Attach to the nucleus three hydroxyl groups, and there result triatomic compounds, among which is a very familiar substance— H H H | | | H-O-C-C-C-O-H | | | H H H | H Glycerine.”

“Attach thyself,” says the alchemist, “to the four letters of the tetragram disposed in the following manner: The letters of the ineffable name are there, although thou mayest not discern them at first. The incommunicable axiom is kabalistically contained therein, and this is what is called the magic arcanum by the masters.” The arcanum—the fourth emanation of the Akâsa, the principle of LIFE, which is represented in its third transmutation by the fiery sun, the eye of the world, or of Osiris, as the Egyptians termed it. An eye tenderly watching its youngest daughter, wife, and sister—Isis, our mother earth. See what Hermes, the thrice-great master, says of her: “Her father is the sun, her mother is the moon.” It attracts and caresses, and then repulses her by a projectile power. It is for the Hermetic student to watch its motions, to catch its subtile currents, to guide and direct them with the help of the athanor, the Archimedean lever of the alchemist. What is this mysterious athanor? Can the physicist tell us—he who sees and examines it daily? Aye, he sees; but does he comprehend the secret-ciphered characters traced by the divine finger on every sea-shell in the ocean’s deep; on every leaf that trembles in the breeze; in the bright star, whose stellar lines are in his sight but so many more or less luminous lines of hydrogen?

[Illustration: Three geometrical shapes] “God geometrizes,” said Plato. “The laws of nature are the thoughts of God;” exclaimed Oërsted, 2,000 years later. “His thoughts are immutable,” repeated the solitary student of Hermetic lore, “therefore it is in the perfect harmony and equilibrium of all things that we must seek the truth.” And thus, proceeding from the indivisible unity, he found emanating from it two contrary forces, each acting through the other and producing equilibrium, and the three were but one, the Pythagorean Eternal Monad. The primordial point is a circle; the circle squaring itself from the four cardinal points becomes a quaternary, the perfect square, having at each of its four angles a letter of the mirific name, the sacred TETRAGRAM. It is the four Buddhas who came and have passed away; the Pythagorean tetractys—absorbed and resolved by the one eternal NO-BEING. Tradition declares that on the dead body of Hermes, at Hebron, was found by an Isarim, an initiate, the tablet known as the Smaragdine. It contains, in a few sentences, the essence of the Hermetic wisdom. To those who read but with their bodily eyes, the precepts will suggest nothing new or extraordinary, for it merely begins by saying that it speaks not fictitious things, but that which is true and most certain.

“What is below is like that which is above, and what is above is similar to that which is below to accomplish the wonders of one thing. “As all things were produced by the mediation of one being, so all things were produced from this one by adaptation. “Its father is the sun, its mother is the moon. “It is the cause of all perfection throughout the whole earth. “Its power is perfect if it is changed into earth. “Separate the earth from the fire, the subtile from the gross, acting prudently and with judgment. “Ascend with the greatest sagacity from the earth to heaven, and then descend again to earth, and unite together the power of things inferior and superior; thus you will possess the light of the whole world, and all obscurity will fly away from you. “This thing has more fortitude than fortitude itself, because it will overcome every subtile thing and penetrate every solid thing. “By it the world was formed.”

This mysterious thing is the universal, magical agent, the astral light, which in the correlations of its forces furnishes the alkahest, the philosopher’s stone, and the elixir of life. Hermetic philosophy names it Azoth, the soul of the world, the celestial virgin, the great Magnes, etc., etc. Physical science knows it as “heat, light, electricity, and magnetism;” but ignoring its spiritual properties and the occult potency contained in ether, rejects everything it ignores. It explains and depicts the crystalline forms of the snow-flakes, their modifications of an hexagonal prism which shoot out an infinity of delicate needles. It has studied them so perfectly that it has even calculated, with the most wondrous mathematical precision, that all these needles diverge from each other at an angle of 60°. Can it tell us as well the cause of this “endless variety of the most exquisite forms,” each of which is a most perfect geometrical figure in itself? These frozen, star-like and flower-like blossoms, may be, for all materialistic science knows, a shower of messages snowed by spiritual hands from the worlds above for spiritual eyes below to read.

The philosophical cross, the two lines running in opposite directions, the horizontal and the perpendicular, the height and breadth, which the geometrizing Deity divides at the intersecting point, and which forms the magical as well as the scientific quaternary, when it is inscribed within the perfect square, is the basis of the occultist. Within its mystical precinct lies the master-key which opens the door of every science, physical as well as spiritual. It symbolizes our human existence, for the circle of life circumscribes the four points of the cross, which represent in succession birth, life, death, and IMMORTALITY. Everything in this world is a trinity completed by the quaternary, and every element is divisible on this same principle. Physiology can divide man ad infinitum, as physical science has divided the four primal and principal elements in several dozens of others; she will not succeed in changing either. Birth, life, and death will ever be a trinity completed only at the cyclic end. Even were science to change the longed-for immortality into annihilation, it still will ever be a quaternary; for God “geometrizes!”

Therefore, perhaps alchemy will one day be allowed to talk of her salt, mercury, sulphur, and azoth, her symbols and mirific letters, and repeat, with the exponent of the Synthesis of Organic Compounds, that “it must be remembered that the grouping is no play of fancy, and that a good reason can be given for the position of every letter.” Dr. Peisse, of Paris, wrote in 1863, the following:

“One word, a propos, of alchemy. What must we think of the Hermetic art? Is it lawful to believe that we can transmute metals, make gold? Well, positive men, esprits forts of the nineteenth century, know that Mr. Figuier, doctor of science and medicine, chemical analyst in the School of Pharmacy, of Paris, does not wish to express himself upon the subject. He doubts, he hesitates. He knows several alchemists (for there are such) who, basing themselves upon modern chemical discoveries, and especially on the singular circumstance of the equivalents demonstrated by M. Dumas, pretend that metals are not simple bodies, true elements in the absolute sense, and that in consequence they may be produced by the process of decomposition.... This encourages me to take a step further, and candidly avow that I would be only moderately surprised to see some one make gold. I have only one reason to give, but sufficient it seems; which is, that gold has not always existed; it has been made by some chemical travail or other in the bosom of the fused matter of our globe; perhaps some of it may be even now in process of formation. The pretended simple bodies of our chemistry are very probably secondary products, in the formation of the terrestrial mass. It has been proved so with

water, one of the most respectable elements of ancient physics. To-day, we create water. Why should we not make gold? An eminent experimentalist, Mr. Desprez, has made the diamond. True, this diamond is only a scientific diamond, a philosophical diamond, which would be worth nothing; but, no matter, my position holds good. Besides, we are not left to simple conjectures. There is a man living, who, in a paper addressed to the scientific bodies, in 1853, has underscored these words—I have discovered the method of producing artificial gold, I have made gold. This adept is Mr. Theodore Tiffereau, ex-preparator of chemistry in the École Professionelle et Supérieure of Nantes.” Cardinal de Rohan, the famous victim of the diamond necklace conspiracy, testified that he had seen the Count Cagliostro make both gold and diamonds. We presume that those who agree with Professor T. Sterry Hunt, F.R.S., will have no patience with the theory of Dr. Peisse, for they believe that all of our metalliferous deposits are due to the action of organic life. And so, until they do come to some composition of their differences, so as to let us know for a certainty the nature of gold, and whether it is the product of interior volcanic alchemy or surface segregation and filtration; we will leave them to settle their quarrel

between themselves, and give credit meanwhile to the old philosophers.

Professor Balfour Stewart, whom no one would think of classing among illiberal minds; who, with far more fairness and more frequently than any of his colleagues admits the failings of modern science, shows himself, nevertheless, as biassed as other scientists on this question. Perpetual light being only another name for perpetual motion, he tells us, and the latter being impossible because we have no means of equilibrating the waste of combustible material, a Hermetic light is, therefore, an impossibility. Noting the fact that a “perpetual light was supposed to result from magical powers,” and remarking further that such a light is “certainly not of this earth, where light and all other forms of superior energy are essentially evanescent,” this gentleman argues as though the Hermetic philosophers had always claimed that the flame under discussion was an ordinary earthly flame, resulting from the combustion of luminiferous material. In this the philosophers have been constantly misunderstood and misrepresented.

How many great minds—unbelievers from the start—after having studied the “secret doctrine,” have changed their opinions and found out how mistaken they were. And how contradictory it seems to find one moment Balfour Stewart quoting some philosophical morals of Bacon—whom he terms the father of experimental science—and saying “ ... surely we ought to learn a lesson from these remarks ... and be very cautious before we dismiss any branch of knowledge or train of thought as essentially unprofitable,” and then dismissing the next moment, as utterly impossible, the claims of the alchemists! He shows Aristotle as “entertaining the idea that light is not any body, or the emanation of any body, and that therefore light is an energy or act;” and yet, although the ancients were the first to show, through Demokritus, to John Dalton the doctrine of atoms, and through Pythagoras and even the oldest of the Chaldean oracles, that of ether as a universal agent, their ideas, says Stewart, “were not prolific.” He admits that they “possessed great genius and intellectual power,” but adds that “they were deficient in physical conceptions, and, in consequence, their ideas were not prolific.”

The whole of the present work is a protest against such a loose way of judging the ancients. To be thoroughly competent to criticise their ideas, and assure one’s self whether their ideas were distinct and “appropriate to the facts,” one must have sifted these ideas to the very bottom. It is idle to repeat that which we have frequently said, and that which every scholar ought to know; namely, that the quintessence of their knowledge was in the hands of the priests, who never wrote them, and in those of the “initiates” who, like Plato, did not dare write them. Therefore, those few speculations on the material and spiritual universes, which they did put in writing, could not enable posterity to judge them rightly, even had not the early Christian Vandals, the later crusaders, and the fanatics of the middle ages destroyed three parts of that which remained of the Alexandrian library and its later schools. Professor Draper shows that the Cardinal Ximenes alone “delivered to the flames in the squares of Granada, 80,000 Arabic manuscripts, many of them translations of classical authors.” In the Vatican libraries, whole passages in the most rare and precious treatises of the ancients were found erased and blotted out, for the sake of interlining them with absurd psalmodies!

Who then, of those who turn away from the “secret doctrine” as being “unphilosophical” and, therefore, unworthy of a scientific thought, has a right to say that he studied the ancients; that he is aware of all that they knew, and knowing now far more, knows also that they knew little, if anything. This “secret doctrine” contains the alpha and the omega of universal science; therein lies the corner and the keystone of all the ancient and modern knowledge; and alone in this “unphilosophical” doctrine remains buried the absolute in the philosophy of the dark problems of life and death.

“The great energies of Nature are known to us only by their effects,” said Paley. Paraphrasing the sentence, we will say that the great achievements of the days of old are known to posterity only by their effects. If one takes a book on alchemy, and sees in it the speculations on gold and light by the brothers of the Rosie Cross, he will find himself certainly startled, for the simple reason that he will not understand them at all. “The Hermetic gold,” he may read, “is the outflow of the sunbeam, or of light suffused invisibly and magically into the body of the world. Light is sublimated gold, rescued magically by invisible stellar attraction, out of material depths. Gold is thus the deposit of light, which of itself generates. Light in the celestial world is subtile, vaporous, magically exalted gold, or ‘spirit of flame.’ Gold draws inferior natures in the metals, and intensifying and multiplying, converts into itself.”

Nevertheless, facts are facts; and, as Billot says of spiritualism, we will remark of occultism generally and of alchemy in particular—it is not a matter of opinion but of facts, men of science call an inextinguishable lamp an impossibility, but nevertheless persons in our own age as well as in the days of ignorance and superstition have found them burning bright in old vaults shut up for centuries; and other persons there are who possess the secret of keeping such fires for several ages. Men of science say that ancient and modern spiritualism, magic, and mesmerism, are charlatanry or delusion; but there are 800 millions on the face of the globe, of perfectly sane men and women, who believe in all these. Whom are we to credit? “Demokritus,” says Lucian, “believed in no (miracles) ... he applied himself to discover the method by which the theurgists could produce them; in a word, his philosophy brought him to the conclusion that magic was entirely confined to the application and the imitation of the laws and the works of nature.”

Now, the opinion of the “laughing philosopher” is of the greatest importance to us, since the Magi left by Xerxes, at Abdera, were his instructors, and he had studied magic, moreover, for a considerably long time with the Egyptian priests. For nearly ninety years of the one hundred and nine of his life, this great philosopher had made experiments, and noted them down in a book, which, according to Petronius, treated of nature—facts that he had verified himself. And we find him not only disbelieving in and utterly rejecting miracles, but asserting that every one of those that were authenticated by eye-witnesses, had, and could have taken place; for all, even the most incredible, was produced according to the “hidden laws of nature.”

“The day will never come, when any one of the propositions of Euclid will be denied,” says Professor Draper, exalting the Aristoteleans at the expense of the Pythagoreans and Platonists. Shall we, in such a case, disbelieve a number of well-informed authorities (Lemprière among others), who assert that the fifteen books of the Elements are not to be wholly attributed to Euclid; and that many of the most valuable truths and demonstrations contained in them owe their existence to Pythagoras, Thales, and Eudoxus? That Euclid, notwithstanding his genius, was the first who reduced them to order, and only interwove theories of his own to render the whole a complete and connected system of geometry? And if these authorities are right, then it is again to that central sun of metaphysical science—Pythagoras and his school, that the moderns are indebted directly for such men as Eratosthenes, the world-famous geometer and cosmographer, Archimedes, and even Ptolemy, notwithstanding his obstinate errors. Were it not for the exact science of such men, and for fragments of their works that they left us to base Galilean speculations upon, the great priests of the nineteenth century might find themselves, perhaps, still in the bondage of the Church; and philosophizing, in 1876, on the Augustine and Bedean cosmogony, the rotation of the canopy of heaven round the earth, and the majestic flatness of the latter.

The nineteenth century seems positively doomed to humiliating confessions. Feltre (Italy) erects a public statue “to Panfilo Castaldi, the illustrious inventor of movable printing types,” and adds in its inscription the generous confession that Italy renders to him “this tribute of honor too long deferred.” But no sooner is the statue placed, than the Feltreians are advised by Colonel Yule to “burn it in honest lime.” He proves that many a traveller beside Marco Polo had brought home from China movable wooden types and specimens of Chinese books, the entire text of which was printed with such wooden blocks. We have seen in several Thibetan lamaseries, where they have printing-offices, such blocks preserved as curiosities. They are known to be of the greatest antiquity, inasmuch as types were perfected, and the old ones abandoned contemporaneously with the earliest records of Buddhistic lamaism. Therefore, they must have existed in China before the Christian era.

Let every one ponder over the wise words of Professor Roscoe, in his lecture on Spectrum Analysis. “The infant truths must be made useful. Neither you nor I, perhaps, can see the how or the when, but that the time may come at any moment, when the most obscure of nature’s secrets shall at once be employed for the benefit of mankind, no one who knows anything of science, can for one instant doubt. Who could have foretold that the discovery that a dead frog’s legs jump when they are touched by two different metals, should have led in a few short years to the discovery of the electric telegraph?”

Professor Roscoe, visiting Kirchhoff and Bunsen when they were making their great discoveries of the nature of the Fraunhoffer lines, says that it flashed upon his mind at once that there is iron in the sun; therein presenting one more evidence to add to a million predecessors, that great discoveries usually come with a flash, and not by induction. There are many more flashes in store for us. It may be found, perhaps, that one of the last sparkles of modern science—the beautiful green spectrum of silver—is nothing new, but was, notwithstanding the paucity “and great inferiority of their optical instruments,” well known to the ancient chemists and physicists. Silver and green were associated together as far back as the days of Hermes. Luna, or Astartè (the Hermetic silver), is one of the two chief symbols of the Rosicrucians. It is a Hermetic axiom, that “the cause of the splendor and variety of colors lies deep in the affinities of nature; and that there is a singular and mysterious alliance between color and sound.” The kabalists place their “middle nature” in direct relation with the moon; and the green ray occupies the centre point between the others, being placed in the middle of the spectrum. The Egyptian priests chanted the seven vowels as a hymn addressed to Serapis; and at the sound of the seventh vowel, as at the “seventh ray” of the rising sun, the statue of Memnon responded.

Recent discoveries have proved the wonderful properties of the blue-violet light—the seventh ray of the prismatic spectrum, the most powerfully chemical of all, which corresponds with the highest note in the musical scale. The Rosicrucian theory, that the whole universe is a musical instrument, is the Pythagorean doctrine of the music of the spheres. Sounds and colors are all spiritual numerals; as the seven prismatic rays proceed from one spot in heaven, so the seven powers of nature, each of them a number, are the seven radiations of the Unity, the central, spiritual SUN.

“Happy is he who comprehends the spiritual numerals, and perceives their mighty influence!” exclaims Plato. And happy, we may add, is he who, treading the maze of force-correlations, does not neglect to trace them to this invisible Sun! Future experimenters will reap the honor of demonstrating that musical tones have a wonderful effect upon the growth of vegetation. And with the enunciation of this unscientific fallacy, we will close the chapter, and proceed to remind the patient reader of certain things that the ancients knew, and the moderns think they know.

“The transactions of this our city of Saïs, are recorded in our sacred writings during a period of 8,000 years.”—PLATO: Timæus. “The Egyptians assert that from the reign of Heracles to that of Amasis, 17,000 years elapsed.”—HERODOTUS, lib. ii., c. 43. “Can the theologian derive no light from the pure, primeval faith that glimmers from Egyptian hieroglyphics, to illustrate the immortality of the soul? Will not the historian deign to notice the prior origin of every art and science in Egypt, a thousand years before the Pelasgians studded the isles and capes of the Archipelago with their forts and temples?”—GLIDDON. How came Egypt by her knowledge? When broke the dawn of that civilization whose wondrous perfection is suggested by the bits and fragments supplied to us by the archæologists? Alas! the lips of Memnon are silent, and no longer utter oracles; the Sphinx has become a greater riddle in her speechlessness than was the enigma propounded to Œdipus.

What Egypt taught to others she certainly did not acquire by the international exchange of ideas and discoveries with her Semitic neighbors, nor from them did she receive her stimulus. “The more we learn of the Egyptians,” observes the writer of a recent article, “the more marvellous they seem!” From whom could she have learned her wondrous arts, the secrets of which died with her? She sent no agents throughout the world to learn what others knew; but to her the wise men of neighboring nations resorted for knowledge. Proudly secluding herself within her enchanted domain, the fair queen of the desert created wonders as if by the sway of a magic staff. “Nothing,” remarks the same writer, whom we have elsewhere quoted, “proves that civilization and knowledge then rise and progress with her as in the case of other peoples, but everything seems to be referable, in the same perfection, to the earliest dates. That no nation knew as much as herself, is a fact demonstrated by history.”

May we not assign as a reason for this remark the fact that until very recently nothing was known of Old India? That these two nations, India and Egypt, were akin? That they were the oldest in the group of nations; and that the Eastern Ethiopians—the mighty builders—had come from India as a matured people, bringing their civilization with them, and colonizing the perhaps unoccupied Egyptian territory? But we defer a more complete elaboration of this theme for our second volume. “Mechanism,” says Eusebe Salverte, “was carried by the ancients to a point of perfection that has never been attained in modern times. We would inquire if their inventions have been surpassed in our age? Certainly not; and at the present day, with all the means that the progress of science and modern discovery have placed in the hands of the mechanic, have we not been assailed by numerous difficulties in striving to place on a pedestal one of those monoliths that the Egyptians forty centuries ago erected in such numbers before their sacred edifices.”

As far back as we can glance into history, to the reign of Menes, the most ancient of the kings that we know anything about, we find proofs that the Egyptians were far better acquainted with hydrostatics and hydraulic engineering than ourselves. The gigantic work of turning the course of the Nile—or rather of its three principal branches—and bringing it to Memphis, was accomplished during the reign of that monarch, who appears to us as distant in the abyss of time as a far-glimmering star in the heavenly vault. Says Wilkinson: “Menes took accurately the measure of the power which he had to oppose, and he constructed a dyke whose lofty mounds and enormous embankments turned the water eastward, and since that time the river is contained in its new bed.” Herodotus has left us a poetical, but still accurate description of the lake Mœris, so called after the Pharaoh who caused this artificial sheet of water to be formed.

The historian has described this lake as measuring 450 miles in circumference, and 300 feet in depth. It was fed through artificial channels by the Nile, and made to store a portion of the annual overflow for the irrigation of the country, for many miles round. Its numerous flood gates, dams, locks, and convenient engines were constructed with the greatest skill. The Romans, at a far later period, got their notions on hydraulic constructions from the Egyptians, but our latest progress in the science of hydrostatics has demonstrated the fact of a great deficiency on their part in some branches of that knowledge. Thus, for instance, if they were acquainted with that which is called in hydrostatics the great law, they seem to have been less familiar with what our modern engineers know as water tight joints. Their ignorance is sufficiently proved by their conveying the water through large level aqueducts, instead of doing it at a less expense by iron pipes beneath the surface. But the Egyptians evidently employed a far superior method in their channels and artificial water-works. Notwithstanding this, the modern engineers employed by Lesseps for the Suez Canal, who had learned from the ancient Romans all their art could teach them, deriving, in their turn, their knowledge from Egypt—scoffed at the suggestion that they should seek a remedy for some imperfections in their work by studying the contents of the various Egyptian museums. Nevertheless, the engineers succeeded in giving to the banks of that “long and ugly ditch,” as Professor Carpenter calls the Suez Canal, sufficient strength to make it a navigable water-way, instead of a mud-trap for vessels as it was at first.

The alluvial deposits of the Nile, during the past thirty centuries, have completely altered the area of the Delta, so that it is continually growing seaward, and adding to the territory of the Khedive. In ancient times, the principal mouth of the river was called Pelusian; and the canal cut by one of the kings—the canal of Necho—led from Suez to this branch. After the defeat of Antony and Cleopatra, at Actium, it was proposed that a portion of the fleet should pass through the canal to the Red Sea, which shows the depth of water that those early engineers had secured. Settlers in Colorado and Arizona have recently reclaimed large tracts of barren land by a system of irrigation; receiving from the journals of the day no little praise for their ingenuity. But, for a distance of 500 miles above Cairo, there stretches a strip of land reclaimed from the desert, and made, according to Professor Carpenter, “the most fertile on the face of the earth.” He says, “for thousands of years these branch canals have conveyed fresh water from the Nile, to fertilize the land of this long narrow strip, as well as of the Delta.” He describes “the net-work of canals over the Delta, which dates from an early period of the Egyptian monarchs.”

The French province of Artois has given its name to the Artesian well, as though that form of engineering had been first applied in that district; but, if we consult the Chinese records, we find such wells to have been in common use ages before the Christian era.

If we now turn to architecture, we find displayed before our eyes, wonders which baffle all description. Referring to the temples of Philoe, Abu Simbel, Dendera, Edfu, and Karnak, Professor Carpenter remarks that “these stupendous and beautiful erections ... these gigantic pyramids and temples” have a “vastness and beauty” which are “still impressive after the lapse of thousands of years.” He is amazed at “the admirable character of the workmanship; the stones in most cases being fitted together with astonishing nicety, so that a knife could hardly be thrust between the joints.” He noticed in his amateur archæological pilgrimage, another of those “curious coincidences” which his Holiness, the Pope, may feel some interest in learning. He is speaking of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, sculptured on the old monuments, and the ancient belief in the immortality of the soul. “Now, it is most remarkable,” says the professor, “to see that not only this belief, but the language in which it was expressed in the ancient Egyptian times, anticipated that of the Christian Revelation. For, in this Book of the Dead, there are used the very phrases we find in the New Testament, in connection with the day of judgment;” and he admits that this hierogram was “engraved, probably, 2,000 years before the time of Christ.”

According to Bunsen, who is considered to have made the most exact calculations, the mass of masonry in the great Pyramid of Cheops measures 82,111,000 feet, and would weigh 6,316,000 tons. The immense numbers of squared stones show us the unparalleled skill of the Egyptian quarrymen. Speaking of the great pyramid, Kenrick says: “The joints are scarcely perceptible, not wider than the thickness of silver paper, and the cement is so tenacious, that fragments of the casing-stones still remain in their original position, notwithstanding the lapse of many centuries, and the violence by which they were detached.” Who, of our modern architects and chemists, will rediscover the indestructible cement of the oldest Egyptian buildings?

“The skill of the ancients in quarrying,” says Bunsen, “is displayed the most in the extracting of the huge blocks, out of which obelisks and colossal statues were hewn—obelisks ninety feet high, and statues forty feet high, made out of one stone!” There are many such. They did not blast out the blocks for these monuments, but adopted the following scientific method: Instead of using huge iron wedges, which would have split the stone, they cut a small groove for the whole length of, perhaps, 100 feet, and inserted in it, close to each other, a great number of dry wooden wedges; after which they poured water into the groove, and the wedges swelling and bursting simultaneously, with a tremendous force, broke out the huge stone, as neatly as a diamond cuts a pane of glass.

Modern geographers and geologists have demonstrated that these monoliths were brought from a prodigious distance, and have been at a loss to conjecture how the transport was effected. Old manuscripts say that it was done by the help of portable rails. These rested upon inflated bags of hide, rendered indestructible by the same process as that used for preserving the mummies. These ingenious air-cushions prevented the rails from sinking in the deep sand. Manetho mentions them, and remarks that they were so well prepared that they would endure wear and tear for centuries.

The date of the hundreds of pyramids in the Valley of the Nile is impossible to fix by any of the rules of modern science; but Herodotus informs us that each successive king erected one to commemorate his reign, and serve as his sepulchre. But, Herodotus did not tell all, although he knew that the real purpose of the pyramid was very different from that which he assigns to it. Were it not for his religious scruples, he might have added that, externally, it symbolized the creative principle of nature, and illustrated also the principles of geometry, mathematics, astrology, and astronomy. Internally, it was a majestic fane, in whose sombre recesses were performed the Mysteries, and whose walls had often witnessed the initiation-scenes of members of the royal family. The porphyry sarcophagus, which Professor Piazzi Smyth, Astronomer Royal of Scotland, degrades into a corn-bin, was the baptismal font, upon emerging from which, the neophyte was “born again,” and became an adept.

Herodotus gives us, however, a just idea of the enormous labor expended in transporting one of these gigantic blocks of granite. It measured thirty-two feet in length, twenty-one feet in width, and twelve feet in height. Its weight he estimates to be rising 300 tons, and it occupied 2,000 men for three years to move it from Syene to the Delta, down the Nile. Gliddon, in his Ancient Egypt, quotes from Pliny a description of the arrangements for moving the obelisk erected at Alexandria by Ptolemæus Philadelphus. A canal was dug from the Nile to the place where the obelisk lay. Two boats were floated under it; they were weighted with stones containing one cubic foot each, and the weight of the obelisk having been calculated by the engineers, the cargo of the boats was exactly proportioned to it, so that they should be sufficiently submerged to pass under the monolith as it lay across the canal. Then, the stones were gradually removed, the boats rose, lifted the obelisk, and it was floated down the river.

In the Egyptian section of the Dresden, or Berlin Museum, we forget which, is a drawing which represents a workman ascending an unfinished pyramid, with a basket of sand upon his back. This has suggested to certain Egyptologists the idea that the blocks of the pyramids were chemically manufactured in loco. Some modern engineers believe that Portland cement, a double silicate of lime and alumina, is the imperishable cement of the ancients. But, on the other hand, Professor Carpenter asserts that the pyramids, with the exception of their granite casing, is formed of what “geologists call nummulitic limestone. This is newer than the old chalk, and is made of the shells of animals called nummulites—like little pieces of money about the size of a shilling.” However this moot question may be decided, no one, from Herodotus and Pliny down to the last wandering engineer who has gazed upon these imperial monuments of long-crumbled dynasties, has been able to tell us how the gigantic masses were transported and set up in place. Bunsen concedes to Egypt an antiquity of 20,000 years. But even in this matter we would be left to conjecture if we depended upon modern authorities. They can neither tell us for what the pyramids were constructed, under what dynasty the first was raised, nor the material of which they are built. All is conjecture with them.

Professor Smyth has given us by far the most accurate mathematical description of the great pyramid to be found in literature. But after showing the astronomical bearings of the structure, he so little appreciates ancient Egyptian thought that he actually maintains that the porphyry sarcophagus of the king’s chamber is the unit of measure for the two most enlightened nations of the earth—“England and America.” One of the books of Hermes describes certain of the pyramids as standing upon the sea-shore, “the waves of which dashed in powerless fury against its base.” This implies that the geographical features of the country have been changed, and may indicate that we must accord to these ancient “granaries,” “magico-astrological observatories,” and “royal sepulchres,” an origin antedating the upheaval of the Sahara and other deserts. This would imply rather more of an antiquity than the poor few thousands of years, so generously accorded to them by Egyptologists. Dr. Rebold, a French archæologist of some renown, gives his readers a glimpse of the culture which prevailed 5,000 (?) years b. c., by saying that there were at that time no less than “thirty or forty colleges of the priests who studied occult sciences and practical magic.”

A writer in the National Quarterly Review (Vol. xxxii., No. lxiii., December, 1875) says that, “The recent excavations made among the ruins of Carthage have brought to light traces of a civilization, a refinement of art and luxury, which must even have outshone that of ancient Rome; and when the fiat went forth, Delenda est Carthago, the mistress of the world well knew that she was about to destroy a greater than herself, for, while one empire swayed the world by force of arms alone, the other was the last and most perfect representative of a race who had, for centuries before Rome was dreamed of, directed the civilization, the learning, and the intelligence of mankind.” This Carthage is the one which, according to Appian, was standing as early as B. C. 1234, or fifty years before the taking of Troy, and not the one popularly supposed to have been built by Dido (Elissa or Astartè) four centuries later.

Here we have still another illustration of the truth of the doctrine of cycles. Draper’s admissions as to the astronomical erudition of the ancient Egyptians are singularly supported by an interesting fact quoted by Mr. J. M. Peebles, from a lecture delivered in Philadelphia, by the late Professor O. M. Mitchell, the astronomer. Upon the coffin of a mummy, now in the British Museum, was delineated the zodiac with the exact positions of the planets at the time of the autumnal equinox, in the year 1722 B.C. Professor Mitchell calculated the exact position of the heavenly bodies belonging to our solar system at the time indicated. “The result,” says Mr. Peebles, “I give in his own words: ‘To my astonishment ... it was found that on the 7th of October, 1722 B.C., the moon and planets had occupied the exact points in the heavens marked upon the coffin in the British Museum.’”

Professor John Fiske, in his onslaught on Dr. Draper’s History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, sets his pen against the doctrine of cyclical progression, remarking that “we have never known the beginning or the end of an historic cycle, and have no inductive warrant for believing that we are now traversing one.” He chides the author of that eloquent and thoughtful work for the “odd disposition exhibited throughout his work, not only to refer the best part of Greek culture to an Egyptian source, but uniformly to exalt the non-European civilization at the expense of the European.” We believe that this “odd disposition” might be directly sanctioned by the confessions of great Grecian historians themselves. Professor Fiske might, with profit, read Herodotus over again. The “Father of History” confesses more than once that Greece owes everything to Egypt. As to his assertion that the world has never known the beginning or the end of an historical cycle, we have but to cast a retrospective glance on the many glorious nations which have passed away, i.e., reached the end of their great national cycle. Compare the Egypt of that day, with its perfection of art, science, and religion, its glorious cities and monuments, and its swarming population, with the Egypt of to-day, peopled with strangers; its ruins the abode of bats and snakes, and a few Copts the sole surviving heirs to all this grandeur—and see whether the cyclical theory does not reässert itself.

Says Gliddon, who is now contradicted by Mr. Fiske: “Philologists, astronomers, chemists, painters, architects, physicians, must return to Egypt to learn the origin of language and writing; of the calendar and solar motion; of the art of cutting granite with a copper chisel, and of giving elasticity to a copper sword; of making glass with the variegated hues of the rainbow; of moving single blocks of polished syenite, nine hundred tons in weight, for any distance, by land and water; of building arches, rounded and pointed, with masonic precision unsurpassed at the present day, and antecedent by 2,000 years to the ‘Cloaca Magna’ of Rome; of sculpturing a Doric column 1,000 years before the Dorians are known in history; of fresco painting in imperishable colors; of practical knowledge in anatomy; and of time-defying pyramid-building.”

“Every craftsman can behold, in Egyptian monuments, the progress of his art 4,000 years ago; and whether it be a wheelwright building a chariot, a shoemaker drawing his twine, a leather-cutter using the self-same form of knife of old as is considered the best form now, a weaver throwing the same hand-shuttle, a whitesmith using that identical form of blow-pipe but lately recognized to be the most efficient, the seal-engraver cutting, in hieroglyphics, such names as Schooho’s, above 4,300 years ago—all these, and many more astounding evidences of Egyptian priority, now require but a glance at the plates of Rossellini.” “Truly,” exclaims Mr. Peebles, “these Ramsean temples and tombs were as much a marvel to the Grecian Herodotus as they are to us!”

But, even then, the merciless hand of time had left its traces upon their structures, and some of them, whose very memory would be lost were it not for the Books of Hermes, had been swept away into the oblivion of the ages. King after king, and dynasty after dynasty had passed in a glittering pageant before the eyes of succeeding generations and their renown had filled the habitable globe. The same pall of forgetfulness had fallen upon them and their monuments alike, before the first of our historical authorities, Herodotus, preserved for posterity the remembrance of that wonder of the world, the great Labyrinth. The long accepted Biblical chronology has so cramped the minds of not only the clergy, but even our scarce-unfettered scientists, that in treating of prehistoric remains in different parts of the world, a constant fear is manifested on their part to trespass beyond the period of 6,000 years, hitherto allowed by theology as the age of the world.

Herodotus found the Labyrinth already in ruins; but nevertheless his admiration for the genius of its builders knew no bounds. He regarded it as far more marvellous than the pyramids themselves, and, as an eye-witness, minutely describes it. The French and Prussian savants, as well as other Egyptologists, agree as to the emplacement, and identified its noble ruins. Moreover, they confirm the account given of it by the old historian. Herodotus says that he found therein 3,000 chambers; half subterranean and the other half above-ground. “The upper chambers,” he says, “I myself passed through and examined in detail. In the underground ones (which may exist till now, for all the archæologists know), the keepers of the building would not let me in, for they contain the sepulchres of the kings who built the Labyrinth, and also those of the sacred crocodiles. The upper chambers I saw and examined with my own eyes, and found them to excel all other human productions.” In Rawlinson’s translation, Herodotus is made to say: “The passages through the houses and the varied windings of the paths across the courts, excited in me infinite admiration as I passed from the courts into the chambers, and from thence into colonnades, and from colonnades into other houses, and again into courts unseen before. The roof was throughout of stone like the walls, and both were exquisitely carved all over with figures. Every court was surrounded with a colonnade, which was built of white stones, sculptured most exquisitely. At the corner of the Labyrinth stands a pyramid forty fathoms high, with large figures engraved on it, and it is entered by a vast subterranean passage.”

If such was the Labyrinth, when viewed by Herodotus, what, in such a case, was ancient Thebes, the city destroyed far earlier than the period of Psammeticus, who himself reigned 530 years after the destruction of Troy? We find that in his time Memphis was the capital, while of the glorious Thebes there remained but ruins. Now, if we, who are enabled to form our estimate only by the ruins of what was already ruins so many ages before our era—are stupefied in their contemplation, what must have been the general aspect of Thebes in the days of its glory? Karnak—temple, palace, ruins, or whatsoever the archæologists may term it—is now its only representative. But solitary and alone as it stands, fit emblem of majestic empire, as if forgotten by time in the onward march of the centuries, it testifies to the art and skill of the ancients. He must be indeed devoid of the spiritual perception of genius, who fails to feel as well as to see the intellectual grandeur of the race that planned and built it.

Champollion, who passed almost his entire life in the exploration of archæological remains, gives vent to his emotions in the following descriptions of Karnak: “The ground covered by the mass of remaining buildings is square; and each side measures 1,800 feet. One is astounded and overcome by the grandeur of the sublime remnants, the prodigality and magnificence of workmanship to be seen everywhere.” No people of ancient or modern times has conceived the art of architecture upon a scale so sublime, so grandiose as it existed among the ancient Egyptians; and the imagination, which in Europe soars far above our porticos, arrests itself and falls powerless at the foot of the hundred and forty columns of the hypostyle of Karnak! In one of its halls, the Cathedral of Notre Dame might stand and not touch the ceiling, but be considered as a small ornament in the centre of the hall. A writer in a number of an English periodical, of 1870, evidently speaking with the authority of a traveller who describes what he has seen, expresses himself as follows: “Courts, halls, gateways, pillars obelisks, monolithic figures, sculptures, long rows of sphinxes, are found in such profusion at Karnak, that the sight is too much for modern comprehension.”

Says Denon, the French traveller: “It is hardly possible to believe, after seeing it, in the reality of the existence of so many buildings collected together on a single point, in their dimensions, in the resolute perseverance which their construction required, and in the incalculable expenses of so much magnificence! It is necessary that the reader should fancy what is before him to be a dream, as he who views the objects themselves occasionally yields to the doubt whether he be perfectly awake.... There are lakes and mountains within the periphery of the sanctuary. These two edifices are selected as examples from a list next to inexhaustible. The whole valley and delta of the Nile, from the cataracts to the sea, was covered with temples, palaces, tombs, pyramids, obelisks, and pillars. The execution of the sculptures is beyond praise. The mechanical perfection with which artists wrought in granite, serpentine, breccia, and basalt, is wonderful, according to all the experts ... animals and plants look as good as natural, and artificial objects are beautifully sculptured; battles by sea and land, and scenes of domestic life are to be found in all their bas-reliefs.”

“The monuments,” says an English author, “which there strike the traveller, fill his mind with great ideas. At the sight of the colossuses and superb obelisks, which seem to surpass the limits of human nature, he cannot help exclaiming, ‘This was the work of man,’ and this sentiment seems to ennoble his existence.” In his turn, Dr. Richardson, speaking of the Temple of Dendera, says: “The female figures are so extremely well executed, that they do all but speak; they have a mildness of feature and expression that never was surpassed.”

_Every one of these stones is covered with hieroglyphics, and the more ancient they are, the more beautifully we find them chiselled._ Does not this furnish a new proof that history got its first glimpse of the ancients when the arts were already fast degenerating among them? The obelisks have their inscriptions cut two inches, and sometimes more, in depth, and they are cut with the highest degree of perfection. Some idea may be formed of their depth, from the fact that the Arabs, for a small fee, will climb sometimes to the very top of an obelisk, by inserting their toes and fingers in the excavations of the hieroglyphics. That all of these works, in which solidity rivals the beauty of their execution, were done before the days of the Exodus, there remains no historical doubt whatever. (All the archæologists now agree in saying that, the further back we go in history, the better and finer become these arts.) These views clash again with the individual opinion of Mr. Fiske, who would have us believe that “the sculptures upon these monuments (of Egypt, Hindustan, and Assyria), moreover, betoken a very undeveloped condition of the artistic faculties.” Nay, the learned gentleman goes farther. Joining his voice in the opposition against the claims of learning—which belongs by right to the sacerdotal castes of antiquity—to that of Lewis, he contemptuously remarks that “the extravagant theory of a profound science possessed by the Egyptian priesthood from a remote antiquity, and imparted to itinerant Greek philosophers, has been utterly destroyed (?) by Sir G. C. Lewis ... while, with regard to Egypt and Hindustan, as well as Assyria, it may be said that the colossal monuments which have adorned these countries since prehistoric times, bear witness to the former prevalence of a barbaric despotism, totally incompatible with social nobility, and, therefore, with well sustained progress.”

A curious argument, indeed. If the size and grandeur of public monuments are to serve to our posterity as a standard by which to approximately estimate the “progress of civilization” attained by their builders, it may be prudent, perhaps, for America, so proud of her alleged progress and freedom, to dwarf her buildings at once to one story. Otherwise, according to Professor Fiske’s theory, the archæologists of A.D. 3877 will be applying to the “Ancient America” of 1877, the rule of Lewis—and say the ancient United States “may be considered as a great latifundium, or plantation, cultivated by the entire population, as the king’s (president’s) slaves.” Is it because the white-skinned Aryan races were never born “builders,” like the Eastern Æthiopians, or dark-skinned Caucasians, and, therefore, never able to compete with the latter in such colossal structures, that we must jump at the conclusion that these grandiose temples and pyramids could only have been erected under the whip of a merciless despot? Strange logic! It would really seem more prudent to hold to the “rigorous canons of criticism” laid down by Lewis and Grote, and honestly confess at once, that we really know little about these ancient nations, and that, except so far as purely hypothetical speculations go, unless we study in the same direction as the ancient priests did, we have as little chance in the future. We only know what they allowed the uninitiated to know, but the

little we do learn of them by deduction, ought to be sufficient to assure us that, even in the nineteenth century, with all our claims to supremacy in arts and sciences, we are totally unable, we will not say to build anything like the monuments of Egypt, Hindustan, or Assyria, but even to rediscover the least of the ancient “lost arts.” Besides, Sir Gardner Wilkinson gives forcible expression to this view of the exhumed treasures of old, by adding that, “he can trace no primitive mode of life, no barbarous customs, but a sort of stationary civilization from the most remote periods.” Thus far, archæology disagrees with geology, which affirms that the further they trace the remains of men, the more barbarous they find them. It is doubtful if geology has even yet exhausted the field of research afforded her in the caves, and the views of geologists, which are based upon present experience, may be radically modified, when they come to discover the remains of the ancestors of the people whom they now style the cave-dwellers.

What better illustrates the theory of cycles than the following fact? Nearly 700 years B.C., in the schools of Thales and Pythagoras was taught the doctrine of the true motion of the earth, its form, and the whole heliocentric system. And in 317 A.D., we find Lactantius, the preceptor of Crispus Cæsar, son of Constantine the Great, teaching his pupil that the earth was a plane surrounded by the sky, which is composed of fire and water, and warning him against the heretical doctrine of the earth’s globular form! Whenever, in the pride of some new discovery, we throw a look into the past, we find, to our dismay, certain vestiges which indicate the possibility, if not certainty, that the alleged discovery was not totally unknown to the ancients.

It is generally asserted that neither the early inhabitants of the Mosaic times, nor even the more civilized nations of the Ptolemaic period were acquainted with electricity. If we remain undisturbed in this opinion, it is not for lack of proofs to the contrary. We may disdain to search for a profounder meaning in some characteristic sentences of Servius, and other writers; we cannot so obliterate them but that, at some future day, that meaning will appear to us in all its significant truths. “The first inhabitants of the earth,” says he, “never carried fire to their altars, but by their prayers they brought down the heavenly fire.” “Prometheus discovered and revealed to man the art of bringing down lightning; and by the method which he taught to them, they brought down fire from the region above.”

If, after pondering these words, we are still willing to attribute them to the phraseology of mythological fables, we may turn to the days of Numa, the king-philosopher, so renowned for his esoteric learning, and find ourselves more embarrassed to deal with his case. We can neither accuse him of ignorance, superstition, nor credulity; for, if history can be believed at all, he was intently bent on destroying polytheism and idol-worship. He had so well dissuaded the Romans from idolatry that for nearly two centuries neither statues nor images appeared in their temples. On the other hand old historians tell us that the knowledge which Numa possessed in natural physics was remarkable. Tradition says that he was initiated by the priests of the Etruscan divinities, and instructed by them in the secret of forcing Jupiter, the Thunderer, to descend upon earth. Ovid shows that Jupiter Elicius began to be worshipped by the Romans from that time. Salverte is of the opinion that before Franklin discovered his refined electricity, Numa had experimented with it most successfully, and that Tullus Hostilius was the first victim of the dangerous “heavenly guest” recorded in history. Titus Livy and Pliny narrate that this prince, having found in the Books of Numa, instructions on the secret sacrifices offered to Jupiter Elicius, made a mistake, and, in consequence of it, “he was struck by lightning and consumed in his own palace.”

Salverte remarks that Pliny, in the exposition of Numa’s scientific secrets, “makes use of expressions which seem to indicate two distinct processes;” the one obtained thunder (impetrare), the other forced it to lightning (cogere). “Guided by Numa’s book,” says Lucius, quoted by Pliny, “Tullus undertook to invoke the aid of Jupiter.... But having performed the rite imperfectly, he perished, struck by thunder.” Tracing back the knowledge of thunder and lightning possessed by the Etruscan priests, we find that Tarchon, the founder of the theurgism of the former, desiring to preserve his house from lightning, surrounded it by a hedge of the white bryony, a climbing plant which has the property of averting thunderbolts. Tarchon the theurgist was much anterior to the siege of Troy. The pointed metallic lightning-rod, for which we are seemingly indebted to Franklin, is probably a re-discovery after all. There are many medals which seem to strongly indicate that the principle was anciently known. The temple of Juno had its roof covered with a quantity of pointed blades of swords.

If we possess but little proof of the ancients having had any clear notions as to all the effects of electricity, there is very strong evidence, at all events, of their having been perfectly acquainted with electricity itself. “Ben David,” says the author of The Occult Sciences, “has asserted that Moses possessed some knowledge of the phenomena of electricity.” Professor Hirt, of Berlin, is of this opinion. Michaelis, remarks—firstly: “that there is no indication that lightning ever struck the temple of Jerusalem, during a thousand years. Secondly, that according to Josephus, a forest of points ... of gold, and very sharp, covered the roof of the temple. Thirdly, that this roof communicated with the caverns in the hill upon which the temple was situated, by means of pipes in connection with the gilding which covered all the exterior of the building; in consequence of which the points would act as conductors.” Ammianus Marcellinus, a famous historian of the fourth century, a writer generally esteemed for the fairness and correctness of his statements, tells that “The magii, preserved perpetually in their furnaces fire that they miraculously got from heaven.” There is a sentence in the Hindu Oupnek-hat, which runs thus: “To know fire, the sun, the moon, and lightning, is three-fourths of the science of God.”

Finally, Salverte shows that in the days of Ktesias, “India was acquainted with the use of conductors of lightning.” This historian plainly states that “iron placed at the bottom of a fountain ... and made in the form of a sword, with the point upward, possessed, as soon as it was thus fixed in the ground, the property of averting storms and lightnings.” What can be plainer? Some modern writers deny the fact that a great mirror was placed in the light-house of the Alexandrian port, for the purpose of discovering vessels at a distance at sea. But the renowned Buffon believed in it; for he honestly confesses that “If the mirror really existed, as I firmly believe it did, to the ancients belong the honor of the invention of the telescope.” Stevens, in his work on the East, asserts that he found railroads in Upper Egypt whose grooves were coated with iron. Canova, Powers, and other celebrated sculptors of our modern age deem it an honor to be compared with Pheidias of old, and strict truth would, perhaps, hesitate at such a flattery.