trat.ns. In the short period of its existence as a known power, it is wonderful what has been learned about the unseen electric currents. Yet the activity of the body is just as visible, is subject to short circuits which result in violent explosions and reactions both mental and physical. It has its highly sensitized as well as its non-sensitized parts, which parts appear to react on each other, similar to the effect produced by imperfectly insulated electric parts. However, this little diversion by the way of illustration need not cause us to conclude that the felt-out mind is electricity as it is generally expressed, but it certainly serves as a useful hint.

While on this subject, let us consider briefly what we mean by Applied Science. Our wonderful knowledge of mechanics and electricity is the result of putting our knowledge to practical use. But how, it may be asked, can this be done when we have no material to work with? In the accepted sense of material this is true, but when we understand that both the felt-out and the thoughtout minds are material, merely highly attenuated forms of matter, we have something to work on. Neither do we need to lose ourselves in hypothesis to find useful subjects and examples. It has been said long ago that there were three classes of people in the world, and while they are subject to variation, for elemental consideration they are useful. The first is that large class of people who talk about people; the next class are those who talk about things; and the third class are those who discuss ideas. All of us are conscious of this and we have also realized how distasteful the lower thought is after we have accustomed ourselves to the higher. We are also aware of the ennobling and uplifting effect of discussing

ideas. Through discussing them, we get an effect interestingly described by Huxley as "A melody of ideas.” If we will carry this discussion, which I have suggested in previous chapters, to a consideration of this melody of ideas apart from the symbolized idea, we find a fourth class which the eminent Bishop who made the illustration should have known. In this class the symbol disappears and as a result symbolized conversation, unless it be of a very high order, becomes not only distasteful but unhealthful; agreeing with the scriptural injunction which tells us that our "conversation is in heaven." Here we get a practical idea of what is meant by Heaven, namely an impartation and consideration of the Absolute. When we have reached this point, we can discern easily the real from the unreal, which is applying positive science. This is the non-variable of Plato, had he known it, in the Absolute sense. There are those who have got a feeble knowledge of this realization and by insisting that the variable was but fleeting phenomena of physical and mental activity, which activity was in the final analysis nothing more than sentient illusions, have done interesting things for themselves and others. Thus a slight knowledge of the Absolute, which Absolute is known only through the Absolute sense, enables us to separate the real from the unreal whereby we become positive instead of speculative and begin to apply science to sentient as well as non-sentient matter.

1 Bible—Philippians 3.20.

CHAPTER VIII

INDUCED ACTIVITIES

While considering in the last chapter the Ultimate Immaterial Element and its effect on human life and thought, we encountered some indirect influences which I have named Induced Activities.1

I have used the word induced because of its resemblance to induced electrical currents. While the analogy

1Ethical students have long been conscious of an X quantity in the process of evolving civilization that increases in power and intensity until it supplants the established order without changing its name or obvious significance. Feeding on the natural processes of evolution it deceives those it would cheat by blossoming into art, culture, opulence and grandeur. In a fragmentary way its methods are known to a peculiar but unclassified type of students. Democracy has always been regarded as its only antidote. But no people has yet, as a class, been sufficiently learned in the principles of ethics to extend democracy far into an intensified civilization. Rather has the democratic element been inclined to keep civilization in the grasp of the primitive. Until we can see the principles of an ethical democracy as we now see the principles of the exact sciences this limitation will continue. "Our scientific education ought to teach us," Tyndall says, "to see the invisible as well as the visible in nature, to picture with the vision of the mind those operations which entirely elude the bodily vision; to look at the very atoms of matter in motion and at rest, and to follow them forth, without ever once losing sight of them, into the world of the senses, and see them integrating themselves in natural phenomena."

When we are taught the different mental attitudes of men in their respective environments, the relation of the mental attitude to the environment, the influence of progress and education on these mental attitudes as well as that of jealousy, misunderstanding, and human ambition, we will cease to classify men in mobs and accuse and abuse them. When we understand that the human mind is but a process of integration of atoms, called matter, into natural phenomena on a gradually ascending scale we will study mind as we now study matter and the scientific processes of men like Tyndall will become the principles of psychology.

is not complete, I have found such relatively immaterial activities as electric and magnetic currents very helpful in conveying to another what is meant by felt-out and thought-out minds.

These induced and inducing activities have been known at all times, have manifested themselves in all places, and their visible activities have been classified under the names of mesmerism and hypnotism. It is this mysterious, intangible power which has lured so many students away from the line of investigation which, had it been continued, would have long ago put mental research on a scientific basis, and at the same time exposed its subtle and deceiving methods.

This seemingly immaterial action without a visible material medium, disguising in the form of supernatural mind, is responsible for all of the phenomena through which its believers have pretended they could communicate with souls that have passed into an unseen world.1

1Under the influences of emotionalism induced by the tragedies of the war of the Allies - The United States of America and the Central Powers - there is a revival of interest in psychical manifestations and communications. Such representative men

as Sir Oliver Lodge and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle are not only lecturing and writing on the subject but they are sincere in their efforts to avail themselves of this method of communicating with loved ones killed in the war. We sincerely sympathize with all of these in their sad bereavement, and far be it from us to deny them any comfort derived from this or any other source: They are, however, making the mistake of studying the phenomena instead of the power by which, and the channel through which, these manifestations and communications are made possible. Moreover, we have not at the present time any processes known to science or education for studying these phenomena. Before we can make any deductions from these psychical demonstrations we will be compelled to learn more about the nature, substance and constituent elements of which these phenomena are constituted.

It is the contention of the Origin of Mental Species that there is an Absolute Perfect Mind which not only fills all space, but

While their seances and manifestations have often been accompanied by trickery and mechanical ingenuity, their adepts have, in all sincerity, actually produced to the satisfaction of the senses, the things they claimed they were capable of doing.

These manifestations have been to the student of action without a medium what the felt-out mind has been to the naturalist. They surround, in some measure, nearly all forms of life, and being both intangible and elusive they have engrossed the attention of students who have exhausted themselves in their efforts to systematize its fleeting phenomena. In the early stages of organic life it is expressed in the form of odor, as instanced in flowers. Animals practice it to lure their prey, and in pre-civilized man it is expressed in secondary sex habits, mysterious arts and cult. Civilized men cultivating it developed it to the point where legislation was necessary to stop its public practice. However, our whole civiliin itself constitutes all space, and this Mind constitutes the only communication without a material medium. There is, however, one psychical mind that exists wherever matter and its psychical expression exist. But this psychical mind is dependent on matter and does not exist beyond the range of matter. But this psychical mind is not Spirit. The psychical mind outlines forms and describes in symbolical language while Spirit neither images nor outlines. Besides, the effect of Revelation is to destroy the power of the psychic and efface the images.

This psychical mind has been both under-estimated and overestimated long enough. It constitutes the law of inheritance of the functions and their formations as well as the possibilities and tendencies of mental powers and their intelligent expressions.

Just as our memory can recall incidents attending our personal existence, so this one psychical mind can recall incidents of its existence, and the psychical medium is one of those who can subordinate their individual personal memory and become an expression of this one psychical mind wherein is retained all of its activities in the nature of material creations and their attendant experiences.

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