Practical Mind-Reading: A Course of Lessons on Thought-Transference, Telepathy, Mental-Currents, Mental Rapport, &c.Atkinson, William Walker
Science
Practical Mind-Reading: A Course of Lessons on Thought-Transference, Telepathy, Mental-Currents, Mental Rapport, &c.
Atkinson, William Walker
Telepathy -- Handbooks, manuals, etc.
Prof. Crookes then went on to say: "It is supposed by some physiologists
that the essential cells of nerves do not actually touch, but are
separated by a narrow gap which widens in sleep while it narrows almost
to extinction during mental activity. This condition is so singularly
like that of a Branly or Lodge coherer (a device which has led Marconi
to the discovery of wireless telegraphy) as to suggest a further
analogy. The structure of brain and nerve being similar, it is
conceivable that there may be present masses of such nerve coherers in
the brain whose special function it may be to receive impulses brought
from without through the connecting sequence of ether waves of
appropriate order of magnitude. Roentgen has familiarized us with an
order of vibrations of extreme minuteness compared with the smallest
waves of which we have hitherto been acquainted, and of dimensions
comparable with the distances between the centers of the atoms of which
the material universe is built up; and there is no reason for believing
that we have here reached the limit of frequency. It is known that the
action of thought is accompanied by certain molecular movements in the
brain, and here we have physical vibrations capable from their extreme
minuteness of acting direct upon individual molecules, while their
rapidity approaches that of the internal and external movements of the
atoms themselves."
A formidable range of phenomena must be scientifically sifted before we
effectually grasp a faculty so strange, so bewildering, and for ages so
inscrutable, as the direct action of mind on mind. It has been said
that nothing worth the proving can be proved, nor yet disproved. True
this may have been in the past, it is true no longer. The science of our
century has forged weapons of observation and analysis by which the
veriest tyro may profit. Science has trained and fashioned the average
mind into habits of exactitude and disciplined perception, and in so
doing has fortified itself for tasks higher, wider and incomparably more
wonderful than even the wisest among our ancestors imagined. Like the
souls in Plato's myth that follow the chariot of Zeus, it has ascended
to a point of vision far above the earth. It is henceforth open to
science to transcend all we now think we know of matter, and to gain new
glimpses of a profounder scheme of Cosmic Law. In old Egyptian days a
well-known inscription was carved over the portal of the Temple of Isis:
'I am whatever has been, is, or ever will be; and my veil no man hath
yet lifted.' Not thus do modern seekers after truth confront Nature--the
word that stands for the baffling mysteries of the Universe. Steadily,
unflinchingly, we strive to pierce the inmost heart of Nature, from what
she is, to reconstruct what she has been, and to prophesy what she yet
shall be. Veil after veil we have lifted, and her face grows more
beautiful, august and wonderful with every barrier that is withdrawn.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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