Mosaic curse, to the third and fourth generation.' Newton in the last years of his life fell into a melancholia which deprived him of his power of thought. Newton himself, in a letter to Locke, says that he passed some months without having a consistency of mind.' He was also subject to vertigo. From the manner of manifestation and the results following from this disease, Moreau goes so far as to say that it permits a certain degree of diagnosis and may be called acute dementia.

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"The insanity of Tasso is probable from the fact that, like Socrates, he believed he had a familiar genius which was pleased to talk with him, and from whom he learned things never before heard of. Swift died insane. Chateaubriand during his youth had ideas of suicide, and attempted to kill himself. His father died of apoplexy; his brother had an eccentricity bordering on insanity; was given to all vices and died of paralysis. My chief fault,' says Chateaubriand, 'is weariness, disgust of everything, and perpetual doubt.' Tacitus had a son who was an idiot. Beethoven was naturally bizarre and exceedingly irritable. He became deaf, and fell into a profound melancholia, in which he died. Alexander the Great had a neurosis of the muscles of the neck, attacking him from birth, and causing his head to incline constantly upon his shoulders, He died at the age of thirty-two, having all the symptoms of acute delirium tremens. His brother Arrchide was an idiot. His mother was a dissolute woman; his father was both dissolute and violent. De Balzac (Honoré) died of hypertrophy of the heart, a disease that can predispose one to cerebral congestion. The eccentricity of his ideas is well known. Lamartine says he had peculiar notions about everything; was in contradiction with the common-sense of this low world.' His father was as peculiar. Lord Chatham was from a family of original mental disproportions, of peculiarities almost approaching alienation. Lord Chatham did not do things as others: he was mysterious and violent, indolent and active, imperious and charming. Pope was rickety. He had this hallucination: one day he seemed to see an arm come out from the wall, and he inquired of his physician what this arm could be. Lord Byron was scrofulous and rachitic and club-footed. Sometimes he imagined that he was visited by a ghost; this he attributed to the over-excitability of his brain. He was born in convulsions. Lord Dudley had the conviction that Byron was insane. The Duke of Wellington died of an apoplectic attack. Napoleon I. had a bent back; an involuntary movement of the right

shoulder, and at the same time another movement of the mouth from left to right. When in anger, according to his own expression, he looked like a hurricane, and felt a vibration in the calf of his left leg. Having a very delicate head, he did not like new hats. He feared apoplexy. To a general in his room he said, 'See up there.' The general did not respond. What,' said Napoleon, ‘do you not discover it? It is before you, brilliant, becoming animated by degrees; it cried out that it would never abandon me; I see it on all great occasions; it says to me to advance, and it is for me a constant sign of fortune.'

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'Originality is very common, both to men of genius and the insane; but in the latter case it is generally without purpose. Lombroso goes so far as to make unconsciousness and spontaneity in genius resemble epileptic attacks. Hagen makes irresistible impulse one of the characteristics of genius, as Schüle does in insanity. Mozart avowed that his musical inventions came involuntary, like dreams, showing an unconsciousness and spontaneity which are also frequent in insanity. Socrates says that poets create, not by reflection, but by natural instinct. Voltaire said, in a letter to Diderot, that all manifes tations of genius are effects of instinct, and that all the philosophers of the world together could not have given 'Les animaux malades de la peste,' which La Fontaine composed without knowing even what he did.”

The remark of Voltaire, above quoted, was itself an inspiration; for it furnishes the key to the whole subject. "All manifestations of genius," says he, "are the effects of instinct," that is to say, all manifestations of genius are the results of cultivation of the subjective faculties; and all the abnormalities of genius are the results of the predominance of the subjective faculties over the faculties of objective reason and judgment.

It is obvious that if there is any one form of psychic development that is useful to mankind, it is that of genius; and it is equally obvious that if there is any one form of psychic development that could possibly be harmless to the physical organism, it must be in cases where the objective and subjective faculties are developed in more or less

316 DEMONSTRATION OF the future life.

perfect synchronism. As genius affords the best, nay, the only illustrations of the most useful and at the same time the least harmful of all manifestations of psychic activity, I have ventured to avail myself of the researches of one of the most eminent students of the abnormal in mankind for the purpose of showing that there is but one step between insanity and the least harmful of psychic manifestations.

One of the great practical lessons, therefore, which psychic science teaches is that, normally, this is an objective world, — the realm of physical life and activity. God has endowed us with faculties of mind exactly fitted for our physical environment; and they are all-sufficient to enable us to master the forces of physical Nature so far as to render our brief sojourn within its realm tolerable and even pleasant. Those are the faculties, therefore, which we should cultivate in this form of existence; for their functions pertain exclusively to this life, and to no other. On the other hand, psychic science teaches us that we are the possessors of other faculties which perform no normal functions in this life; and practical experience shows that the habitual exercise of those faculties in this life produces the most disastrous results to both body and mind.

The conclusion is irresistible that we should carefully refrain from exercising and developing, in this life, those powers which belong exclusively to another form of existence; and the necessity for this inhibition becomes still more apparent when we remember that all immorality, all vice, all crime, and all insanity arise from one and the same cause, namely, the dominance of the subjective faculties; and that all exercise of psychic powers for other than works of necessity, and all practices which develop and cultivate the subjective faculties, have a direct tendency to arouse to abnormal activity those emotions and propensities which, uncontrolled by reason, lead to immorality, vice, crime, and insanity.

CHAPTER XXII.

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A Perspective View of the Arguments Presented. - The Final Syllogism. The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. - The Christian's Heaven. - The Revelations of Modern Science Identical with those of Jesus.

I

HAVE now briefly outlined a few of the principal arguments for a future life which are based upon the observable and demonstrable facts of experimental psychology, so far as those facts have been definitely ascertained through modern scientific investigations. The treatment has necessarily been brief; for, although the science of the soul is yet in its infancy, the basic facts have accumulated at an astonishing rate since the world has learned where to look for them. From the great mass of data thus far available I have selected what seemed to be the most important, and, to borrow a phrase from art, I have delineated them thus far in sectional detail. A perspective view will now be attempted in the form of a brief résumé of the salient features of the argument. This will be done at the risk of what might be considered unnecessary repetition; but the intelligent reader will agree with me that fundamental facts and principles cannot be too thoroughly impressed upon the mind of the earnest and conscientious searcher after truth.

The fundamental axiom upon which our argument is based, and which the reader is again requested constantly

to bear in mind, is this: There is no faculty, emotion, or organism of the human mind that has not its use, function, or object.

The first great fundamental fact presented to view is that man is endowed with a dual mind. This has been abundantly demonstrated by the facts of experimental hypnotism, cerebral anatomy, and experimental surgery. It has also been shown to be a primordial fact of psychic evolution.

The fact of duality alone, considered in connection with our fundamental axiom, is sufficient to put the intelligent observer upon an earnest inquiry into the possible use, function, and object of a dual mental organism; and his first inquiry is, "What possible use is there for two minds if both are to perish with the body?" A future life, therefore, is at once suggested by this one isolated fact; and the suggestion is further strengthened by the fact that, whilst one of the two minds grows feeble as the body loses its vitality and is extinguished when the brain ceases to perform its functions, the other mind grows strong as the body grows weak, stronger still when the brain ceases to act, and reaches its maximum of power to produce observable phenomena at the very hour of physical dissolution. It is simply impossible, from these two facts alone, to resist the conclusion that the mind which reaches its maximum of observable power at the moment of dissolution is not extinguished by the act of dissolution. These facts, therefore, constitute presumptive evidence of a future life. They are not claimed to be conclusive; yet it can truly be said that men of sound judgment habitually stake their dearest interests upon evidence less demonstrative of vital propositions. It would, indeed, be difficult to find any other rational hypothesis that would explain all the phenomena pertaining to these two facts.

The next great fact, or congeries of facts, which presents itself to view is that