partly in outward causes, which influence and excite the inward element: these are psychical traditional communication, and the physical geographical conditions, as well as the mode of life, occupation, and food. Thus education carries at the same time with the treasure of collected experience the teachings of good and evil, and therewith inoculates the judgments of posterity, which are as indelible as scars or moles. A calm, perfectly quiet, and little occupied mode of life, with absence of outward distractions, gives space to the creations of the inward imagination; for the mind is never quiescent. Abstinence from, or want of food, causes the production of visions, as well as certain means which call them forth. In geographical respects, secluded, isolated, and but rarely frequented places; solitudes and deserts; waters and forests, are of the negative causes, by which the fancy peoples the outward silence and poverty, and enriches from the cornucopia of its plenty. 7. The magical influence upon others, and at a distance, is the active pole of the soul and the vital powers, as the instinctive perception, in inward contemplation, is the passive pole. The former is not more wonderful than the latter, and as the darkly conscious soul comes to feel and imagine in an infinite sphere, in which the natural, supernatural, and material are reflected; so does the autonomic power act as inexplicably in that sphere, unshackled by mechanical matter, as it influences the muscular fibres or the limbs. The soul has no absolute consciousness of the influence, either in the imagination or the will; it has only a sensation, but no organ of direct perception. Enough that the life-sphere of man is great and unbounded; and this is a fact which offers rich materials for speculation, but which cannot be denied. "The true magic is in the secret, innermost powers of our soul." 8. This fact shows that the life-sphere consists of the reciprocal action of the powers in general, and of the vital ones in particular; that also an universal rapport and a comprehensive sympathy exist, having neither temporal nor focal boundaries. Neither rapport nor sympathy requires any particular element to conduct it; the universal vital powers alone make it conceivable how opposite points or objects may be produced by a modification, an increase, or negative passiveness of the powers, and how thus all individuals of the life-sphere—the world-stand in a great and universal communion. Individuals stand in peculiar sympathy with each other in the life-sphere, and mutually influence each other; for like associates with like. It is according to the modification of the powers of the soul and of existence in individuals, and the mutual increase or negative passiveness, that they reciprocally act upon each other, without requiring peculiar powers for this, and without being clearly acquainted with the process. Everything which is embraced by a mechanical or organic bond sympathises. If the mental and vital powers are not disunited, the infection of visions upon children, or animals, as in second sight, may be comprehended; for all things which are in the same bond of sympathy are visible to each other. even 9. From this we may deduce the following as evident, that the mental and vital powers are not separated in individuals; for the soul is never active when the vital powers are extinguished, because only life can contain the soul. It is, therefore, equally comprehensible how between two living persons a peculiar reciprocity is possible; such as the sympathetic influence of the soul of the one upon the vital powers of the other, and in return the influence of the vital powers upon the soul, not only in the immediate neighbourhood, but also under circumstances, as it were, atmospherically at a distance, -as is proved by the appearance of magnetism in modern, and magic in ancient times. 10. If the supernatural and super-material may be reflected upon the ensouled vital powers from an unmeasured distance (imaginatio passiva), and therefore influences may take place between the mind and body, of which, however, the soul has no distinct consciousness, then is the direct mental influence and activity undeniable; for that which is spiritual is not separately spiritual, and all wonders of the world of spirits are in the end resolved into wonders of our own mind. Whether, however, spirits are in themselves abso lutely supernatural, super-material, or not; from whence they act, and whether directly through powers, or indirectly upon the fancy or vital powers, is not to be explained, and as little to be denied as proved. We may as well conjecture a multitude of spiritual beings unconnected with material nature, as that the physical world consists of a multitude of things and powers: we may conjecture that the spiritual beings act, according to their nature, directly upon the mental and vital powers, upon peculiarly disposed persons, so that the impulse touches the tuned chord like a breath of air. The vital power touched in this manner transforms for itself the spiritual into the material, according to innate forms, and places this before itself in passive or active conditions. But we may also believe that the vital soul-power is self-illumining, and that the spiritual eye of the inner sense under (unknown) circumstances perceives polar perceptions, even in distance of time and space, reflected upon itself, as if felt at a distance-as if it came upon spiritual, supernatural powers, which it feels in its nature, and then possibly illuminates by its contemplation. According to Pordage the soul alone perceives external things through its outwardly innate tending power, or by a radiation from outward things into itself. In such a manner the most varied spiritual communications of different nations and individuals may be explained, and all the contradictions in the objective revelations may be solved, which in nations and men of different faith and imagination take place in respect to spiritual apparitions, where each one communicates with spirits after his own nature; for some people will see a human form in a cloud, while others will imagine it to resemble Juno. The Oriental seer contemplates the world in Brahma's light; the Moslem sees the houris in Mahomet's heaven; the rude Schaman hears in his ecstasy terrible spirits under the roof of his hut, and the witch of the middle ages even her communications with the devil: in short, science here only supplies conjectures, not certainties. But these conjectures at least make this in science a certainty, that spirits and supernatural appearances have no objective existence in fixed shapes, for they must, if such were the case, always appear in the same manner; there are, therefore, spiritual appearances without spirits. If the conclusions already arrived at rest upon a firm foundation, and, as it appears to me, are indisputable, we may conclude as follows: 1. That there is an universal connection in nature, and a mutual reciprocity in sympathetical and anti-pathetical contrasts, but which cannot be perceived by the waking senses; so that there is, at all events, a something of which the senses do not give direct evidence. 2. That the world is not a piece of mechanism, which runs down by an objectless necessity, and again winds itself up blindly; and that the world is also not of a soulless nature. 3. That nothing is known concerning a spiritual world. 4. That the living soul not only stands in sympathetic connection with the body, but also with the principles of nature, between which exist the invisible threads of attraction, limits of which no mathematics define. can 5. That a spiritual communion exists between man and man, and therefore also between man and superior beings, is not to be denied; for in all history such a communion is not only suspected, but dimly felt, and even spoken of in subjective assertion. 6. That all the propaganda of common-sense explanations will certainly strive in vain and will never succeed in the attempt to entirely eradicate, root and branch, the presentiments, sensations, and convictions of firmly-founded faith or superstition, or to bolt and bar so securely all castles, ruins, and cloisters, that ghosts and apparitions shall not still, as before, take up their abode there. 7. That also dogmatic belief will as little be able to exorcise ghosts, or banish evil spirits, which trouble the brain as visions, and lurk in the dark corners of the mind. 8. Lastly, that in German science nothing yet is certain or fixed respecting nature and spirit, the soul or body, or the possibility or probability of reciprocal influences: "Dies diei eructat verbum, et nox nocti indicat scientiam" (Ps. xviii. 13.) True magic lies in the most secret and inmost powers of the mind. Our spiritual nature is still, as it were, barred |