Old New Ideas
Created | Updated Mar 25, 2018
Let's get meta-physical, meta-physical…
Old New Ideas
It has come to our Editorial Attention that far too many people these days think they've got the world all figured out. This is a silly notion. To remedy it, we will take the opportunity of the Create Challenge, which is Hindsight, to bring you some speculations from 1900 on the nature of Reality. They're pretty well Out There, and you might do well to ponder them. Not everything worth knowing is on Twitter.
This text comes from the oddly-titled Electricity and the Resurrection, by William Hemstreet. archive.org says '1834- ', but as usual, we suspect he's dead now. They never do the maths. If he's the guy I think he is, he was born in Oneida, New York, and survived the US Civil War with honour, having fought at Shiloh. Before the war, Hemstreet had the interesting job of 'stenographic amanuensis' to the Illinois Railroad Company. I guess it sounded better than 'secretary'. After the war…sorry, the War, Hemstreet was a journalist, travel writer, and writer of 'psychological works', which I suppose is what this is. I still don't know when he died, though as I said, I'm pretty sure he did, unless he was resurrected.
Enjoy these thoughts from 1900. Let's start a Hemstreet fan club. I have t-shirt ideas…
The Substance of the Soul1
Many social and personal phenomena show the spiritual body; they convince us that the mind has a direct, dynamic and material power over other minds, inducting its conditions, character and desires, suffusing and impressing them by both voluntary and involuntary
force, without speech, sign or any bodily or physical media whatever; that the will force of man is an independent and substantial force, and that its laws and methods of action are like those of physical forces2 . Mental conditions and characteristics are infectious like diseases3, or are vibratory like light, heat and magnetism. They have a mechanical action aside from moral or logical influence. Whether that dynamic force of one mind upon another is an emission of its substance, or is a vibration or mode of motion upon the intervening
ether, will be discussed later4.
It is certainly agreeable to reason to believe that there are some slight effluxions5 from spirit to spirit where men are in each other's presence, the same as from body to body6.
Lord Bacon
Quite ordinary phenomena seem to indicate that the will of an individual does at times affect the ether or nerve atmosphere about him.
Hyland C. Kirk7
And I experienced that extraordinary emotion which, like the magnetic fluid, surrounds extraordinary destinies.
George Sands[sic]8.
Napoleon radiated his spirit upon his armies and the world as directly as any physical effect is produced, and without the aid of the ordinary sensible media9. There had been poured into his organism from the sources of space10, independent of heredity, a quantity of soul force that was as phenomenal as any physical fact. Outward nature supplied him, contemporaneously and directly.
The seed of genius falls directly from God's hand.
Gen. Lew Wallace11
Some thinkers have attributed this involuntary and magical personal influence to mere bodily causes, such as tone of voice, look of the eye, or self-confidence or an overbearing manner. The materialists believe mind to be only the result of the molecular motion of
physical matter in the body, and they endeavor to account for many of the so-called mesmeric, telepathic and clairvoyant phenomena wholly by physical law, or by a joint action of mind or body upon the etheric medium that exists everywhere, connecting us all12. While we incline to believe that the mind or soul is an organized body, super-physical, and has a direct effect upon other minds by laws wholly psychic or separate from physical law, involving in no degree the
mediumship of physical or animal matter, yet if the body were incidentally brought in part into the relationship of a medium of transmission, there still is a central and independent origin of pyschic power, a fountainhead or a seat of will, an interior soul-body that is as independent of the animal body as a man is independent of his house, or as a foetus becomes independent of its parent, or as a snail is of its shell. The will and soul-body may be utterly free of, and yet be temporarily allied to, a physical body, and be influenced or reacted upon thereby, automatically when not under its own free volition and judgment. Bodily appetites, which are blind, temporal and without will, may sometimes overcome a weak and ignorant soul-will, but the latter is eternal and may dominate when it maintains its own most secret delicate poise
upon its own throne13.
Men's characters and wills are strong precisely like their bodies, not morally but substantially and physically, as one electric or air current is stronger than another. It takes quantity and fibre of muscle to make physical strength; so it requires quantity of soul-substance to make strength of soul and will14. There is the same difference between the density and fibre of souls that there is between the density and fibre of basswood and hickory15, pewter and steel, or gold and brass. The exercise of authority requires material strength of will, using "material" in its common meaning, not moral or intellectual strength. To command, where moral force is of no avail and interests are not a moving consideration, one needs volume of soul-substance, the same as in physical force. Muscular force can only be exerted by will force16. Willing is not material, but it is associated naturally with ether that is material, as cohesion is associated with matter. Intellect and morals are not alone sufficient for power over other men. A human being's character works out from him involuntarily and mechanically, as a stove gives out heat17. If a man be not pure gold no building up will give him the value of gold; if he be not steel no whetting will make him cut; if he be bad no art will conceal his badness; if he be good his goodness will be felt without effort. All soul conditions radiate themselves involuntarily as a flower does its fragrance or a lamp its light or magnet its force18.
'If a teacher has an opinion that he wishes to conceal, his pupils will become as fully indoctrinated into that as into any which he publishes. If you would not be
known as doing a thing, never do it.
Emerson19
Curse not the king, no, not in thy thought; and curse not the rich in thy bed chamber; for a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter.
Ecclesiastes 10:2020
The soul cannot conceal any more than the sun can. No lie was ever fully believed21. Nor can ambition backed by energy and courage supply a want of inborn power. Dearth of natural pride, of gravity or dignity cannot be made up by affectation22. Human beings pass on sight as coins do, for their intrinsic worth, although dull people are deceived by manners. A little man soulfully cannot be a big man no matter how hard he tries23, any more than brass can feel itself to be gold. A babbling brook, however clear, active or ambitious, cannot be a Niagara24. We can emit no tone but just in correspondence to our metal.
