Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/110

100 and cross-question these gentlemen, and before witnesses, and they maintain their assertion stolidly; and I believe that they do see in their own mind the chairs doing all they say; but what this peculiar condition of mind implies I know not. To the majority of readers such tales appear mere vaporing. I can offer no explanation, except that these visions are not delusions, for the perpetrators are reasoning beings and sane; they are not illusions, for such gentlemen (and ladies, too, I believe, but I have not met them) believe that they are actually moving solid furniture merely by the force of their own suggestion. Such acts, so interpreted, appear to me to be only able to be likened to those of a deity—and a deity is beyond our comprehension. They are not due to animal magnetism. They are not dreams. The effect of suggestion by means of "hypnotism," with its startling results, has been witnessed by thousands, but any similar explanation breaks down here. If these things be true, then the connection between the animate and inanimate creation is complete. For obvious reasons, names can not be introduced into such a paper as this; but I believe that I could gain an introduction to one or both of these gentlemen for any person, sufficiently well known, and desirous of investigating such material.

The lower animals, then, in a degree, do almost all that we can do. Plants do many things that were once considered to be solely the doings of the animal creation. The ultimate sitructural elements of either will some day assist in the formation of mountains and seas. Therefore, indeed, we are all one—animal, plant, mountain, sea. The component elements and molecules of the animal and plant creation have simply become highly idealized and specialized. The marked difference between man and a mountain lies in the constant dissipation of energy by man and its passive retention by the mountain. The mountain is a mere reservoir of energy; man one of the compounds of elements used for the dissipation of energy.—Gentleman's Magazine.

difficulties that many Lave experienced in understanding the writings of the alchemists are accounted for by M. M. Pattison Muir by showing that the names they used and which have survived as the names of well-known substances were applied only to certain principles or properties that matter was supposed to possess. Thus the word sulphur represents the principle of changeability, and the word mercury the principles of malleability and luster which the metals exhibit. The alchemists used expressions of this kind partly to hide their secrets from the uninitiated, and partly to preserve themselves from the suspicion of dealing with the evil one, who was considered to be the possessor of the earth. The mystical language was derived, to a large extent, from theology. Possibly the alchemists attached some definite meanings to the fantastic terms they used, but the meanings are lost to us.