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Second Sight: A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance by Sepharial

VIII. ALLIED PSYCHIC PHASES

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Nature is full of a subtle magic of this sort for which we have no organized science. It is said that if you put snails together and afterwards separate them, placing each upon a copper ground to which electric wires are attached, a shock given to one snail will be registered by the other at the same moment. I have not tried this theory, but the idea is fundamental to a mass of telepathic observations which have found practical expression in wireless telegraphy. Some thirty years ago, however, I made trial of the twin magnet theory and was entirely successful in getting wireless messages from one room to another. The performance was, however, clumsy and tedious, and I did not then know enough to see how it could be perfected. The idea is now in the very safe custody of the Patents Office.

Community of taste can be demonstrated under hypnosis. It is not otherwise usually active in sensitives, and Swedenborg was hence of opinion that the sense of taste could not be obsessed. This, however, is incorrect. I have illustrated community of all the senses under hypnosis in circumstances which entirely precluded the possibility of feint or imposition on the part of the subject.

Another phase of psychic activity is that illustrated in "dowsing" or water-finding by means of the hazel fork. It may be accounted a form of hyperaesthesia and no doubt has a nervous expression, but it is not the less psychic in its origin. I have already referred to the action of water upon psychic sensitives, and there seems little room for doubt that it is the psychometric sense which, by means of the self-extensive faculty inhering in consciousness, registers the presence of the great diamagnetic agent. Professor Barrett has written a most interesting monograph on this subject, and there are many books extant which make reference to and give examples of this curious phenomenon. The late British Consul at Trieste and famous explorer and linguist, Sir Richard Burton, could detect the presence of a cat at a considerable distance, and I have heard that Lord Roberts experiences the same paralyzing influence by the proximity of the harmless feline. If, therefore, one can register the presence of a cat, and another that of a dead body, I see no difficulty in others registering water or any other antipathetic. All we have to remember is that these things are psychic in their origin, and not ignorantly confound sensation with consciousness, or hyperaesthesia with the various psychopathic faculties we have been discussing. But it is necessary to return to our main subject and consider where our developed clairvoyant or second-sight faculty will lead us, and what sort of experience we may expect to gain by its use. These points may now be dealt with.

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