Upon all the occurrences that we have noted was the one enveloping phenomenon of the revival. There is scarcely a place that I have mentioned, in any of the accounts, that was unagitated.
Why is it that youngsters have so much to do with psychic phenomena? I have gone into that subject, according to my notions. Well, then, when a whole nation, or hosts of its people, goes primitive, or gives in to atavism, or reverts religiously, it may be that conditions arise that are susceptible to phenomena that are repelled by matured mentality. A hard-headed materialist says, dogmatically: "There are no occult phenomena." Perhaps he is right about this, relatively to himself. But what he says may not apply to children. When, at least to considerable degree, a nation goes childish with mediaevalism, it may bring upon itself an invasion of phenomena that in the middle ages were common, but that were discouraged, or alarmed, and were driven more to concealment, when minds grew up somewhat.
If we accept that there is Teleportation, and that there are occult beings, that is going so far that we may as well consider the notion that, to stop inquiry, a marauding thing, to divert suspicion, teleported from somewhere in Central Europe, a wolf to England: or that there may be something of the nature of an occult police force, which checks mischief and slaughter by the criminals of its. kind, and takes teleportative means to remove suspicion— often solving one problem, only by making another, but relying upon conventionalizations of human thought to supply cloakery.
The killing of poultry— the body on the railroad line— stoppage— scene-shifting.
The killing of sheep— the body on the railroad line— stoppage—
Farm and Home, March 16— that hardly had the wolf been killed, at Cumwinton, in the north of England, when farmers, in the south of England, especially in the districts between Tunbridge and Seven Oaks, Kent, began to tell of mysterious attacks upon their flocks. "Sometimes three or four sheep would be found dying in one flock, having in nearly every case been bitten in the shoulder and disemboweled. Many persons had caught sight of the animal, and one man had shot at it. The inhabitants were living in a state of terror, and so, on the first of March, a search party of 60 guns beat the woods, in an endeavor to put an end to the depredations."
A big dog? Another malmoot? Nothing?
"This resulted in its being found and dispatched by one of Mr. R. K. Hodgson's gamekeepers, the animal being pronounced, on examination, to be a jackal."
The story of the shooting of a jackal, in Kent, is told in the London newspapers. See the Times, March 2. There is no findable explanation, nor attempted explanation, of how the animal got there. Beyond the mere statement of the shooting, there is not another line upon this extraordinary appearance of an exotic animal in England, findable in any London newspaper. It was in provincial newspapers that I came upon more of this story.
Blyth News, March 4— "The Indian jackal, which was killed recently, near Seven Oaks, Kent, after destroying sheep and game to the value of £100, is attracting attention in the shop windows of a Derby taxidermist."
Derby Mercury, March t5— that the body of this jackal was upon exhibition in the studio of Mr. A. S. Hutchinson, London Road, Derby.
Chapter 15
IN EVERY ORGANISM, there are, in its governance as a whole, mysterious transportations of substances and forces, sometimes in definite, circulatory paths, and sometimes specially, for special needs. In the organic view, Teleportation is a distributive force that is acting to maintain the balances of a whole; with the seeming wastefulness sometimes, and niggardliness sometimes, of other forces: providing, or sometimes providing, new islands with vegetation, and new ponds with fishes: Edens with Adams, and Adams with Eves; always dwindling when other mechanisms become established, but surviving sporadically.
Our expression is that once upon a time, showers of little frogs were manifestations of organic intelligence, in the choice of creatures that could survive, in the greatest variety of circumstances, if indefinitely translated from place to place. They'd survive in water, or on land; in warmth, or in coldness. But, if organic intelligence is like other intelligence, there is no understanding it, except as largely stupid; and, if it keeps on sending little frogs to places where they're not wanted, we human phenomena cheer up, thinking of the follies of Existence, itself. I have never done foolisher, myself, than did Nature when it, or she— probably she— fatally loaded the tusks of mammoths, and planted a tree on the head of the Irish elk, losing species for the sake of displays. By intelligence I mean nothing that can be thought of as exclusively residing in, or operating in, brain substance: I mean equilibration, or adaptation, which pervades all phenomena. The scientific intelligence in human brains, and the physiologic intelligence that pervades the bodies of living things, wisely-foolishly acts to solve problems, and somewhere in the beauty of a theorem, or of a peacock, lurks the grotesque. When Nature satisfies us critics with such a graceful stroke as a swimming seal, she fumbles her seal on land.
But there is another view. We apologizing theologians always have another view. Cleverness and stupidity are relative, and what is said to be stupidity has functional value. To keep on sending little frogs, where, so far as can be seen, there is no need for little frogs, is like persistently, if not brutally, keeping right on teaching Latin and Greek, for instance. What's that for? Most of the somewhat good writers know little of either. According to my experience, both of these studies, if at all extended, are of no active value, except to somebody who wants to write up to the highest and noblest standards of the past, and considers himself literary. But this is an expression upon the functions of stupidity. It is likely that showers of little frogs, and the vermiform appendix, and classical studies are necessary for the preservation of continuity between the past and the present. Some persons, who know nothing about it, must for ages go on piously believing in Sir Isaac Newton's doctrine. People who go to fortune tellers and people who go to church are functioning conservatives. If the last platypus or the last churchgoer should die off, there would be broken continuity. It would be a crack in existence. Perhaps to this day, a chink is stuffed with iguanas, which are keeping alive the dinosaur-strain. Why is it that, when one's mind is not specializing upon anything, it is given to recalling past experiences? It is preserving continuity with the past, or is preserving whatever one can be thought of, as having, of identity. We shall have instances of the interruption of this process, in human minds. Perhaps if Existence should stop sending little frogs, and stop teaching Latin and Greek, a whole would be in a state of amnesia. Our expression is that Teleportation is enormously useful to life upon this earth, but our data have been, and for a while will continue to be, mostly of its vagaries, or its conservations.
If our existence is an organism, it would seem that it must be one of the most notorious old rascals in the cosmos. It is a fabric of lies. Everywhere it conjures up appearances of realness and finality and trueness— words that I use as synonyms for one state— and then, when examined, everything is found not to be real, or final, or true, but to be depending upon something else, or some other chimera, merging away, and losing its appearance of individuality, into everything else, or every other fraud. That this pseudo-individualizing may in some cases realize itself is a view that I am not taking up in this book. Here it is our concern to find out, if we think we can, whether we be the phenomena of an organism, or not. Whether that organism be producing something, or be graduating realness out of the phenomenal, is a question that I shall take up some other time.
Imposture pervades all things phenomenal. Everything is a mirage. Nevertheless, accepting that there is continuity, I cannot accept that anybody ever has been an absolute impostor. If he's a Tichborne Claimant, after a while he thinks that there may be some grounds for his claims. If good and evil are continuous, any crime can be linked with any virtue. Imposture merges away into self-deception so that only relatively has there ever been an impostor.
Every scientist who has played a part in any developing science has, as can be shown, if he's been dead long enough, by comparing his views with more modern views, deceived himself. But there have been cases that look more flagrant. To what degree did Haeckel doctor illustrations in his book, to make a theory work out right? What must one think of Prof. Kammerer? In August, 1926, he was accused of faking what he called acquired characters on the feet of toads. In September, he shot himself. The only polite way of explaining Prof. Smyth, Astronomer Royal of Scotland, who founded a cult upon his measurements of the Great Pyramid, is to say that his measuring rod must have slipped. If in his calculations, Prof. Einstein made the error that two distinguished mathematicians say he made, but, if eclipses came out, as they should come out, as reported by astronomers who did not know of the error, there is very good encouragement for anybody to keep on deceiving himself.
I can draw no line between imposture and self-deception. I can draw no line between anything phenomenal and anything else phenomenal, even though I accept that also there are lines. But there are scientists who have deceived others so rankly that it seems an excess of good manners to say that also they deceived themselves. If among scientists there have been instances of rank imposture, we shall expect to come upon much imposture in our data of irresponsible persons. The story told by Prof. Martino-Fusco, of Naples, when, in August, 1924, he announced that he had discovered the 109 missing volumes of Livy's History of Rome, is not commonly regarded as imposture, because when the Professor could not produce the missing volumes, his explanation that he had been indiscreet was published and accepted. This scientist's indiscretion was glossed over, as in the time of full power of the preceding orthodoxy, the indiscretion of any priest was hushed up. The impression went abroad that all that was wrong was that the Professor had been too ardent, or so hopeful of finding the books that prematurely he had announced having found them. But there are other impressions. They are of credulous American millionaires, and of the unexpected interest that the Italian Government showed in the matter.
What about the other Professors, who told that they had seen the volumes? See Current Literature, 77-594. Here is published a facsimile of four lines, which Dr. Max Funcke said that he had copied from one of the manuscripts, which according to Prof. Fusco's explanation, he had only hoped to find. I can find no explanation by Dr. Funcke.
One explanation is that perhaps there was not forgery, and that perhaps the volumes were found, and by evasion of representatives of the Italian Government, are in the collection of a silent, American millionaire, today. But I do not think that collectors care much for treasures that they can't tell about.
The tale of an itch— Dr. Grimme and the inscribed stone— and the irritation it was to a pious Professor, until he was able to translate it, as it should be translated. In the year 1923, Dr. Grimme, Professor of Semitic Languages, at the University of Munich, sent out good cheer to the faithful. God, who had been doing poorly, got a boost. Dr. Grimme announced that, from an inscribed stone, which had been discovered in a temple, at Sinai, he had deciphered the story of the rescue of the infant Moses, from the Nile, by an Egyptian Princess.
London Observer, Oct. 25, 1925— a letter from Sir Flinders Petrie— that Dr. Grimme had made his translation by adding cracks in the stone, and some of its weather marks, to the hieroglyphics— that, in one division of the inscription he had "translated" as many scratches as he had veritable characters, to make the thing come out right.
If Dr. Grimme alleviated an itch with scratches, that is the temporary way by which problems always have been said to be solved.
Only to be phenomenal is to be at least questionable. Any scientist who claims more is trying to register divinity. If Life cannot be positively differentiated from anything else, the appearance of Life itself is deception. If, in mentality, there is no absolute dividing-line between intellectuality and imbecility, all wisdom is partly idiocy. The seeker of wisdom departs more and more from the state of the idiot, only to find that he is returning. Belief after belief fades from his mind: so his goal is the juncture of two obliterations. One is of knowing nothing, and the other is of knowing that there is nothing to know.
But here are we, at present not so wise as no longer to have ideas. Suppose we accept that anything phenomenal ever has developed, though only relatively, into considerable genuineness, or a good deal of a look of genuineness, so long as it is not examined. But it began in what we call fraudulency. Everybody who can exceptionally do anything, began with a pose, with false claims, and with extreme self-deception. Our expression is that, in human affairs, rank imposture is often a sign of incipiency, or that astrologers, alchemists, and spiritualistic mediums are forerunners of what we shall have to call values, if we can no longer believe in truths. It could be that, with our data, we tell of nothing but lies, and at the same time be upon the track of future values.
Snails, little frogs, seals, reindeer have mysteriously appeared. The standardized explanation of mysterious human strangers, who have appeared at points upon this earth, acting as one supposes inhabitants of some other world would act, if arriving here, or acting as inhabitants of other parts of this earth, transported in a state of profound hypnosis, would probably act, is that of imposture. Having begun with a pretty liberal view of the prevalence of impostors, I am not going much to say that the characters of our data were not impostors, but am going to examine the reasons for saying that they were. If, except fraudulently, some of them never have been explained conventionally, we are just where we are in everything else that we take up, and that is in the position of having to pretend to think for ourselves.
The earliest of the alleged impostors in my records— for which, though not absolutely, I draw a dead line at the year 1800— is the Princess Caraboo, if not Mary Willcocks, though possibly Mrs. Mary Baker, but perhaps Mrs. Mary Burgess, who, the evening of April 3, 1817, appeared at the door of a cottage, near Bristol, England, and in an unknown language asked for food.
