The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, October 26, 1902, Page 11

nly is mysterious which ws Ve not yet fathomed. The tele- hone, which by daily use has be- to us commonplace, is a deep, stery to the half civilized the frozen north. Each prob- self for solu- Lery until we have grasped J»I © bassdrum of our pursery s final problein we a b unknown has made it known— ure is. an open book it is o w nknown tongue to him d the key. Few even : @Ve read more than tne first pages, w seem to at la ve discovered is a force, finer perhaps than but quite as tangible. It is only ght he the quality capable musician, keen that ghtest discord or the the person who tries can vibrations of those about he ly taken place dant thought ke my brain with the force of blow ave since learned the tal self-defense and thereby from the “early grave” to cians unitedly assigned e a small child my 00k me on a trip through North- shire. One night we stopped at seby. During the night I > find myself sitting up ing what appeared to be the nes of a man and woman quar- the middle of the room. I saw seize the woman by the throat from the window to the He then jumped out after lasted b @& moment and was It was in fact as quick aud thought. e landlord, when spoken to, admitted I had exactly described the details murder which had been committed i that room s time before. y is that the Yhoughts of d woman continued to Mve in that room, producing a re easily discernible to the itive. Every object is but embodiment of a thought. itself must therefore have substance visible to the soul ughts are material, tangible things— e S from the mind—which i m They areexpressions of the snuxfi A both material and spiritual. Mind &nd soul are not spirit. This is the stum- bling block in the way of all students ©of psychology. They confound spirit with mind. There is the transference of t mind to mind—which is there is the exchange of sympathy between souls— v be called inspiration. When it to spirit, we are one and indiv- e twelve years ago, on my first to this country, I aroused consid- . fon by asserting that sference *was the natural of communication and that the far distant when the entire recognize the force of telep- the person who does mot rtance of psychological t, indeed. st, earnest student of the unknown finds his path beset with difficulties. How to separate the false from the true, the genuine phenémena from the tricksof the prestidigitateur, be- comes a serious question. He sees prac- tical, clear-headed men of finance, busi- ness and literature become the victims of the most flagrant imposture in the guise ot “occultism,” and he decides to aban- don further research, lest he, too, find himself the dupe of his own credulity. But he who denies the existence of the ofe 3 Why bother about putting your mame down on the wait- ing list at the libraries for a popular book of fiction when you can get the same uovel complete in two issues of The Sunday Call? Why do you go to & book storé and pay a dol- lar and n half for a book that is published in two, or at most three, issues of the Sunday Call. You must read a mews- paper—The Sunday Call gives you all the news of the day; it gives you all the up-to-date features of any magaczine; it gives you a popular novel. The Sunday Call offers more to its readérs than the combined ef- forts of any other tem papers published in the world. As you must have a newspaper, get the besi=—The Sunday Call. THE SUNDAY CALL. ALEXANDER J. Me IVoR— TYNDALL. . \f |{/ IRAWING THE Ms'z'mz. PICTURE- OF YT HE. WIoMAN world of spirit, or that in the realms of thought there may be found the solu- tion of many of life's great problems, is even more foolish than he whose over- credulous mind engulfs him in the super- natural. In demonstrating my faculty of read- ing the thoughts of those about me I do. not claim any supernatural power. Nor do I claim to read abstract thought. I depend, at least in public demonstrations, where one must be reasonably sure of In- stant success, on the strength of mind of those about me. For this reason law- yers, physicians, writers, artists and pro- fessional men generally are the best sub- lects for experiment, because they are &ccustomed to concentration of thought. ‘Women as a rule are not good subjects, as they become nervous and self-can- scious. That of course 1s not because they are women, but because the average woman is unaccustomed to steady con- centration of mind. Lady Henry Somerset—who is not an average woman—possesses such strength of intellect as to make possible the seem. ingly impossible feat of reading long entences through the agency of her con- centrated thought. Calve, although of the emotional and artistic temperament, possesses the rare faculty of self-forget- fuiness to such an extent as to make her an excellent subject for experiment. Many persons, 1 believe, possess to u greater or lesser degree the faculty of receiving thought vibrations. The power lies in the ability to make one’s mind receptive. It is to a certain extent de- pendable upon one’s susceptibility to hyp- nosis. The attacks of syncope and catalepsy to which I have frequently succumbed in making experiments are the result of too complete absorption in the subconscious- ness.. The animation of the physical senses s completely suspended. This condition may also attend the subject who concentrates his mind too intently. In this copnection an incident which oe- curred during my first visit to this coun- try, some ten years ago, will be remem- bered by many San Franciscans. During a course of experiments made at Metropolitan Hall Thomas P. Burns, then, as now, cashier of the sub-treasury, acted as my subject for concentratio: I was to produce in a picture the idea that was in his mind. I do not remember who were the other gentlemen present, but as I took Mr. Burns' hand and began to draw-lines on a blank piece of paper with a crayon they crowded thickly @rcund us. Almost as soon as the picture was completed I felt myself going and I became unconscious. I awpke after three days of catalepsy o find that Mr. Burns had also lost phy- ical consciousness and had remained in the subconscious state for several hours. His/concentrated will had" completely sub- jected not only mine, but his own phy- sical senses. In carrying out experiments I am blind- folded, as an ald In making my mind re- ceptive to the thought forces about me. If 1 had my vision it would be difficult— even impossible—to do away with my own impressions. I allow myself to become, for the time being, a part of the per- sonality of the one whose thought I am to demonstrate. His or her mind, so far as it is’focused upon any one thing, be- comes mine. Like a flash there is regis- tered in my mind the object.of his or her thought. It is, I believe, a high degree of sympathy between sou! and soul and proves the actual brotherhood of man- kind/ The greater the sympathetic under- standing of those about me the more clearly the impression comes to me. In trying to learn a rfumber of which a per- son is thinking, for instance, I may catch an indistinct jumble of flgures and then as his mind becomes fully concentrated upon it the figures stand out before me with vivid distinctness. The subject of an experiment need not a believer In thought transference, but.he must possess sufficlent thoughtforce to produce a men- tal picture. A good example of this fact was shown in my recent experiments with Mrs. Allen Cowan to illustrate this article. The test was readiffy thought through the unconscious mind of a third person, showing how we: recelve and absorb thoughts around us. Both myself and the third party to the test, who knew abso- lutely nothing of what Mrs. Cowan was to concentrate her mind on any more than I myself did, were blindfolded. Mrs. Cowan concentrated her thoughts upon her favorite horse. Almost in- .stantly the picture was conveyed to my mind without the intermediary, through ‘whose mind the thought had to pass, be- ing conscious of it. > The fact that’ we unconsciously receive and absorb the thoughts and feelings of others I have many times fuily illustrated by this experiment, in which the concen- trated thought of one person is conveyed to e through the subconscious mind of anbther. The idea of accomplishing this came about In this way: It was during my re- cent visit to my home in England. My father was entertaining some guests at dinner, when the conversation turned to psychic subjects. The Rev. Robert Guin- ness, rector of the parish, asked why it is that In holding “‘circles” for psychic development the persons composing the circle were invariably asked to join hands. I suggested that in cases where the “circle” was held with unquestion- able honesty of purpose the unbroken circle formed a telegraphic system, the joined hands acting as wires, connect- ing each individual with the dynamo or the medium. » In the same way I said that I belleved I could read the thought of an actjve brain passing along the “wires” formed by placing a passive person between, the intermediary being ignorant of the thought transmitted. KFrom this, natur- ally enough, the next step was to put the theory into practfe. The rector, who is a stout, phlegmatic man, agreed to act as the intermediary, and Sir Arthur Brooke, a young man of strong magnetic power, was to act as the concentrator. THE SUBJECT IS THINKING | ABOUT: » Y FINDING THE MURDERED FMAN 1 was blindfolded while the party went to my father’s study, in a remote part of the house, and, taking down a bound quarto of the Lancet, selected the word “atropl’ll{" as the subject of concentra- tion. hlrnlni. they blindfolded Mr. Guinness (who had remained in the room with me during their absence) and placed his right hand in my left, his left hand clasping Sir Arthur’s right. {¥For a moment my mind was a confused Rlank, and then I felt an impulse to move in the direction of the study. This caused consternation, as the rector’s portly form came into contact with the drawing-room furniture. The locafion of the thought was at length abandoned and the Ind of my subject centered on the word it- self. A pencil and blank paper were brought and I wrote down each letter as it came to me, ‘“‘Yhporta.” \ For an instant every one thought I was rong, until Sir Arthur remarked that I had written the word backward. As for myself, as the letters began to shape themselves before my mind’s eye, I de- cided that the word chosen was from some unknown tongue. Jt is a singular fact that words, letters, numbers and even pictures frequently reach my mind backward, or “up side dewn,” as theugh reflected in a mirror. In the same way when called upon to de- scribe the varfous colors, the colors which are compiementary to those thought of come to my mind, In my experiments before the camera with Mrs. Cowan, in the second test with- ko + McIvor-Tyndall, a young English London surgeon and a member of — OME ten years ago there appeared before. the American publie a man whose peculiar psychic powers were looked upon as most marvelous and fascinating. This man ‘was Dr. Alexander J. physician, the,son of an eminent one of the most aristocratic and influential families in England. Since that time his demonstrations in psychic phenomena have won him an international reputation, though nowhere, perhaps, did his experiments create a bigger sensa~ tion than in this city and Los Angeles. Professor McIvor-Tyndall is now in San Francisco again and has written an article over his own signature explaining the mys- teries of his strange art. For purposes of illustration Mrs. Allen Cowan became the subject of the the Stanford studio. experiment before the camera at out the intermediary, she concentrated her mind on the word Pardee, the name of the Republican candidate for Gover- nor. Almost immediately after I was blindfolded the word came to me, but it appeared backward thus KEedrap, and thus I wrote it. It is a strange truth, but a truth never- theless, that a person sufficlently sensitive to thought Influehce can detect a criminal by his thought aura, even though he be, naturally enough, unwilling to have his thought demonstrated. A case in point is that of & man named Dawson, with whom I came in contact scme years ago- in Los Angeles. Mr. Glass, who was then Chief of Police of Los Angeles, asked me to interview a prisoner in the Cotnty Jail. The man gave his name as Dawson and was booked for larceny. There was no tangible evi- dence against him obtainable, however, and he had already been detained five days when I Wwas introduced to him oy Chief Glass. We were accompanied by the police surgeon, a number of detectives and W. A. Spalding, an editorial writer on the Los Angeles Times. Fear of me, probably, caused Dawson’s mind to concentrate upon his crimes with startling intensity, for the scenes of a safe robbery flashed before my mental vision with panoramic rapidity. “You have an accomplice named George ‘Wilson and you robbed the Santa Monica Postoffice,” 1 exclaimed with conviction. Gradually, through the focalization of thought, I discovered- the details of sev- eral burglaries and told the detectives where. to find the stolen goods. He was convicted and sentenced. Criminals gen- erally carry their crimes about with them in thought., Indeed, the thought comes, is harvored and fostered for years some- times before it finally crystallizes in the crime {tself. But this same potency of thought as a force may be as clearly proven in the case of one who is in no wise guilty of a real crime and who merely reproduces the crime in pantomime, as was demou- strated in the murder test with Mrs. Cowan in the photograph studio. Mrs. Cowan was told to concentrate her thoughts on the deed itself. When blind- folded I grasped her hand, and, therd tak- ing up a dagger, approached the victim, seated, all unconscious of his danger, at y— G = =z — a table reading, and stabbed him twice, and, as he rolled over on the fioor, stooped over him and felt of his heart to see if it had stopped beating. This was precisely the mental picture Mrs. Cowan bad her thoughts concen- Photo by Stanford Studio. IR RPTAES WN NS — s trated upon and the scene was reproduced In detail just as she was picturing it to herself. Therefore if she, who is a mere Das- sive subject of a test, could convey her thoughts to me, through thought reading, how _mur:h more readilv may one detect a criminal whose Innermost thoughts c]mg"most tenaciously to his crimes. .y B . I have heard thought-reading designated as ‘“muscle readin That is, the thought reader is _accredited with &my acute perception and interpretation of thel motor nerves as they become affected by the action of the brain cells. This theory, it seems to me, Is very far- fetched and grants to the thought reader a power far more remarkable than any I claim for myself. There are cases, no doubt, among friends and “just for fun where the- pseudo thought reader guided to some point of concentrativeness by the purely muscular action of his com~ panion; but this I hold to be possible only in cdses where the guidance is vel- untary and wholly conscious. In the intricate and difficult experi- ments demanded of one who essays the public exercise of his power, the condi- tions are quite different. If the tests were possibie of accomplishment through any muscular sense, it would be far more won- derful than by the comparatively simple vrocess of making oneself subjective to xhe mental control of another. Moreover, some of my most interesting experiments have been made without phy- sical contact with my subject. But just as wireless telegraphy is possible—yet for practical purposes we still find the wires the best—so in thought transference the more tangible results are obtained by us- ing some immediate medium of trans- mission. It may be an insulated wire; or Joined hands. i . . No one, who will give the subject in- telligent {nvestigation, can doubt the mar- velous power of thought. Think health, energy, vitalfty, cheerfulness, strength and success for a year and you will not need medicine or money. Think kindness, sympathy, helpfulness, eharity and faith and you will not need & creed. to tie to. You will be a lving demonstration of your thoughts. I believe that we are indeed on the eve of a new dispensation. The time is not so very distant when telepathy will be the universal langauge. There will be flashes from mind to mind, gn exact picture of the thought to be conveyed. Words, after all, written or spoken, fail to convey the exact thought. They are but clumsy sym= bols. No False Teeth for Aged People. ERE is a new suggestion—that false teeth in old people’s mouths are an offense against nature—set forth in an article contributed to What To Eat: “I_suppose I ought to be getting me & set ol faise teeth, doctor?” said an elder- ly lady to Her family physiclan. The question was asked with that tome and accent which show that the questioner takes the answer for granted. Great was the lady's sypprise, therefore, when the physician refllied, most decidedly: “By no means, so far as heaith is con- cerned. On the contrary, it would be & rather dangerous and foolish thing to do. If your natural teeth trouble you and & dentist cannot give relief without remov- ing them, why, by all means, have them out—but don’t supply their placs with ar- tificial ones. There is nothing which causes a doctor more trouble among el- derly patients than this unnatural cus- tom. “I see you will not be satisfled untll T explain why,” he continued, laughingly. “Well, the reason in a nutshell is just this: False teeth in old age are an of- fense against nature. Why do our teeth decay and become of little Wse to us as we grow old? It is a hygienic precaution of nature to prevent the eating of food unsuitable for old age—animal food in particular. When, therefore, an old per- son defles this safeguard of nature and procures an artificlal set of teeth that are quite as good as the natural teeth for masticating purposes, and in many cases better, the temptation is strong to continue eating the same food as in one's youth and prime. As a result, the sys- tem becomes clogged with protein and waste matter and serious digestive trou- bles set in.” Is there any one who will deny that this physician’s advice as regards the die- tary of old age is entirely reasonable and sensibie? Old age is a return to child- hood in mary ways, and in no way more distinctly than in the matter of food and drink. As some one has said, “The food of the nursery is the best in old age.” A second childhoed in this respect is emie READINLs THE MIND OF THE WOMAN \ THROUGH # JECOND PARRTY. nently desirable. Qf 800 persons over 80 years of age eXx- amined b an English physicfan 60 per cent were found to be moderate eaters of light foods, 30 per cent were very eaters of any food and 10 per cent were large eaters of hearty foods.