The Arena | Page 6

way of progress by a wholly contrary opinion, and have very innocently supposed that science had uttered to them her last word. In astronomy, in physics, in chemistry, in optics, in natural history, in physiology, in anatomy, in medicine, in botany, in geology, in all branches of human knowledge, it would be easy to fill several pages with the names of celebrated men who believed science would never pass the limits reached in their own time, and that nothing remained to be discovered thereafter. In the army of wise men now living it would not be difficult to name many distinguished scholars who imagine that, in the spheres whereof they are masters, it is needless to search for anything new.
It may be unbecoming to talk about one's self, but as, on the one side, some have done me the honor to ask what I think of certain problems,--while, on the other side, I have been more than once accused of busying myself, in a rather unscientific way, with certain vague investigations,--I will begin by acknowledging that the maxim contained in the two verses of my motto has been the conviction of my whole life; and if, from my callow youth until this very day, I have been interested in the study of phenomena pertaining to the domain of inquiries called occult, such as magnetism, spiritualism, hypnotism, telepathy, ghost-seeing, it is because I believe we know next to nothing of what may be known, and that nearly everything still remains to be apprehended; for I believe the thirst for knowledge is one of our best faculties, the one most prolific, without which we should still be dwelling in an Age of Stone, inasmuch as it is our right, if not our duty, to seek the truth by all the methods accessible to our intellectual powers.
It is for this reason that I published among other things, in the course of the year 1865,--now a quarter-century past,--a treatise entitled Unknown Natural Forces, and touching certain questions analogous to those which are to occupy our attention in this paper; and so I ask my readers to note the following quotations therefrom, as an introduction to our present investigation:
It is foolish to suppose that all things are known to us.
True wisdom involves continual study.
In the month of June, 1776, a young man, the Marquis de Jouffroy, was experimenting upon the Doubs,[1] with a steamboat forty feet long by six feet wide. For two years he had been inviting scientific attention to his invention; for two years he had insisted that steam was a powerful force, heretofore unappreciated. All ears remained deaf to his voice. Complete isolation was his sole recompense. When he walked through the streets of Beaume-les-Dames, a thousand jests greeted his appearance. They nicknamed him Jouffroy the Pump. Ten years later, having constructed a pyroscaphe [steamboat] which voyaged along the Saone, from Lyons to Isle Barbe, Jouffroy presented a petition to Cabinet Minister Calonne and to the Academy of Sciences. They refused even to look at his invention.
[1] The Doubs is a stream after which one of the Eastern Departments of France is named. Its principal city is Besan?on, the birthplace of Victor Hugo.
On August 9, 1803, Robert Fulton, the American, ascended the Seine in a novel steamboat, at a speed of six kilometers per hour. The Academy of Sciences and the government officials witnessed the experiment. On the tenth they had forgotten him, and Fulton departed to try his fortunes with his own countrymen.
In 1791 an Italian, named Galvani, suspended from the bars of his window at Bologna some flayed frogs, which he that morning had seen in motion on a table, although they had been killed the night before. This incident seemed incredible, and was unanimously rejected by those to whom he related it. Learned men would have considered it below their dignity to take any pains to verify his story, so sure were they of its impossibility. Galvani, however, had noticed that the maximum effect was produced when a metallic arc, of tin and copper, was brought into contact with the lumbar nerves and pedal extremities of a frog. Then the animal would be violently convulsed. The observer believed this came from a nervous fluid, and so he lost the advantage of his observations. It was reserved for Volta to really discover electricity.
Yet already Europe is furrowed by wagons drawn by flame-mouthed dragons. Distances have vanished before the patience of the humble workers of the world, which is reduced to pettiness by the genius of man. The longest journeys have become well-trodden promenades; the most gigantic tasks are accomplished under the potential and tireless hand of this unseen force; a telegraphic despatch flies, in the twinkling of an eye, from one continent to the other; without leaving our armchairs, we