BY STINSON JARVIS.

In the April number of this magazine its Editor gave us a paper called “The Man in History.” Readers will not have failed to note the grand width and depth it gave to ordinary views. The facts concerning the human being, from the earliest records to those of the present day, were marshalled in so masterly a way, and the mental grip on the whole mass was so far-reaching and unique, that people must have perceived that they were gaining the benefits of a lifetime study.

This article is therefore in no sense a reply to Dr. Ridpath’s masterpiece. On the contrary, I wish to refer to all the historical events as he has introduced them, and can only regret that want of space forbids a reprint which would enable the original to be read with these comments. My endeavor is simply to bring forward for contemporaneous consideration certain suggestions which seem to me to be of a highly interesting character, and which were forced in upon my own thought by the results of experiments upon the human being. After the long series of articles published in The Arena about three years ago, many of my readers will not require further explanation of these experiments; but for others I will briefly refer, later on in this paper, to the phenomena which greatly affect one’s views regarding man’s powers and possibilities, together with the nature and extent of his agency in the world’s events.

Dr. Ridpath has brought forward as interesting a question as was ever laid before a public, namely, how far, if at all, Man is the maker of history. And by the word “history” the learned author does not mean those records of events which any chance chronicler may choose to present, but the events themselves, their causes, action, and results. Here he presents both sides of the question, with the arguments which may be alternately used in support of each. He cites two master thinkers, Carlyle and Buckle, whose differences of opinion relative to man’s agency in history were distinctly defined: Carlyle seeking the hero in each great event, and recognizing only one force, that of God, behind the principal actor of the temporary drama, and never satisfied until the individual origins of history could be discovered. On the other hand, Buckle, to whom man, including the part he played, appeared “as the mere result of historical forces,” and in the view of scientific rationalism contemplating “only the lines of an infinite and unalterable causation encompassing the world and bringing to pass whatever is done by the agency of men en masse.”

I confess I was not by any means clear at first as to what Buckle meant by this “infinite and unalterable causation.” If he meant the shapings of heredity coming down through many generations to produce a man able to lead in a certain event, then I followed him. I also sufficiently understood him if he referred to national desires and necessities assisting to produce competent manipulators of important events. But I did not gather until later that this language might possibly be intended to include what in common parlance is called “the will of God.”

In the alternation of contention which Dr. Ridpath lays before us with so much skill, we are all more or less familiar with the Carlyle side of the argument, so let us consider a part of what is said on the Buckle side. In sentences collected from different portions, the “believer in the predominance of universal causation” is represented as speaking in this way:

We come then to the admission on the Buckle side of the argument that the forces referred to as “universal causation” may possibly include the will of God. And from the time this admission is made there seems to be little of material difference between the contestants. Practically, both refer, or may refer, back to the will of God; and the discussion here brings me to the point at which some pertinent questions may be asked.

In what historical crises has the will of God been manifested? Can you confidently point to one? If so, your conversational friend will probably call your attention to some terrible disasters which arose from it. Perhaps you may thus point to some monarchy. But your iconoclastic friend will probably refer you to a loathsome system of parasitic adulation, in which place and position went by favoritism and whimsical preference, and where advancement through personal merit was almost unknown. These ills, you think, could not be present in a republic; but when you point to one of these, your attention is directed to an internal rottenness in which justice and liberty are bought and sold by men who must make their fortunes during a short term of irresponsible office. You are then apt to smile at the idea that any of these represented the intentions of God.

Or, to take an extreme case, you may instance the life, teachings, and death of Christ. But if your friend be a fairly good amateur historian he can sufficiently indicate the many wars, the almost countless conflicts and incalculable amount of manslaughter that belief in Christ gave rise to. He can tell of those stupendous waves of crusadic fanaticism in the course of which the pillage and rapine of utterly lawless hordes brought undying disgrace upon Europe. He can pile story upon story of carnage and divided homes until you may possibly conclude that it would have been better for the world if the cross of Golgotha had never been heard of. A wrong conclusion, most certainly; but one that has oceans of facts to back it.

Outside the cases in which retribution has seemed to follow close upon wrongdoing, where can we find a momentous event of history which we can point out to ourselves and say with confidence, “That, certainly, was brought about by the will of God.” If amalgamation of hostile baronies into one dominant nation and the acquirement of many civil advantages may be regarded as a blessing, then some will point back to an immensely picturesque figure of history and claim that the Norman William was one specially produced by the divine will for an event from which issued peculiarly valuable results. But here we have to face a question which is continually prominent when historical events are attributed to the will of God: “Is it necessary,” we are driven to ask ourselves, “that God’s purposes be brought to a culmination through trickery, perjury, manslaughter, and every kind of falsity?” Personally I feel totally unable to think this. I wish to mention the difficulties which everyone who thinks honestly must encounter, and to do so reverently. History thus seems to enforce acceptance of one of two conclusions: Either that the justice of God is not what we are glad to suppose it to be; or else that these matters were not conducted according to the divine will. For in William’s case we find all these difficulties: the claim to be acting on Harold’s promise, the prior mortgaging of the intended results to the church of Rome in order to gain the assistance of foreign hordes by calling the proposed invasion a holy war, and other trickeries which need not now be set out. He brought his newly-made England into the bondage of a hierarchy, and in buying Romish aid established a precedent that was followed by other kings until priestcraft gained the unlimited power which drained the coffers of Europe, impoverished Italy, beggared Spain, revelled in the demoniacal Inquisition, subsequently degraded the Lower Canadians to almost the ignorance of the beasts, and is now using the whole of its political power to fasten its vampire clutch upon the fair virgin provinces of the Canadian Northwest.

If William could have foreseen some results of his handiwork he could have been properly regarded as one of the worst devils ever let loose upon the earth. And yet we are asked to believe that all these things were foreknown to the Deity, and that the shaping of William’s policy was under the divine will.

This brief survey of a great event is only one of a large number that could be made, each collection of occurrences showing similar mixed conditions—some exhibiting resulting benefits, but in many cases mingled with disaster and distress to such an extent that the movement as a whole cannot possibly be attributed by any thinking person to the divine will.

Every historian will admit that in the great events of history, the conquests and other large acquisitions of territory, some one or more of the following disgraces were present: the killing of human beings, false pretences, pillage and rapine, human tortures, treacheries, imprisonments, introductions of diseases, plagues, and bad habits, traffic in drugs and liquors which debauched, degraded, and killed. Such a list is almost endless. And shall we say that an Almighty Father caring for his children could have desired such proceedings? Surely not! Let us be sensible and conform our judgment to the evidence.

In doing so, what is our alternative? Are we not forced to comprehend that even the most valuable improvements were only advanced so far as human intelligence could advance them when this intelligence was illuminated by a partial exercise of its highest faculties? Are we not forced to admit that the resulting benefits, whether personal or national, were for the most part those which were humanly foreseen, and that the subsequent disasters were for the most part those which could not be foreseen by human intelligence?—or were foreseen and intentionally risked and braved? Has there been a single event of history which cannot be honestly attributed to human intelligence—this being aided by a partial exercise of its highest faculties?

What, then, are these highest faculties? What are the powers within man which enable him to transcend other men, and previous men? Let me here state my conviction, which later on will seem justified, that advance in comprehension of the higher faculties in man must be gained through a further acquaintance with phenomena which may be present in hypnotic conditions. I do not mean that personal attention to the experiments is necessary, no matter how preferable. Nor do I suggest that they tell as much as one could wish—at least, so far as I have followed them. Mine have only led me to the outside ramparts of vast realms which await the investigations of others.

What I mean is that everyone should in some way be made certain, either through personal experiment or reliable hearsay, that in the human make-up there are faculties which may be forced by will-power into an activity which they do not manifest in the ordinary daily life. There is no reason to doubt that these are the same faculties which become so apparent in the keen-sightedness of those who are great in statecraft, diplomacy, business, or in any other way. With ordinary people, especially the laboring classes, these faculties seem more inactive, through disuse. In most men they seem to show activity only when forced by concentration and will-power; but there are bright people of both sexes in whom they seem very alert without urging.

My reasons for stating that everyone should be acquainted with these peculiarities are well founded. Without this the admission that there is a “soul” in man is largely due to the compulsion of hearsay. Without this, and certain other studies, some of the reasons for the evolution of man and beast are obscured, and the most telling argument in favor of further evolution remains practically a blank. Without this we need not look for a better understanding of man’s place in history. But, on the other hand, this kind of research supplies proof of many seemingly miraculous powers in man which have valuable explanations to make in regard to the history of history.

Here the truth-seeker may prove to himself the reality of “soul.” And why should anyone admit its reality if he has never had cause to regard himself as anything better than a good-natured animal? Unless he has had made clear to him some soul-truths (which, owing to the fact that every human being is a hypnotic patient, are generally made manifest without any dabbling in experiments)—unless, I say, he has been in some way convinced of the reality of “soul,” his moral ramparts are chiefly constructed of the hearsay that provides but slim defence. The suggestion here is that the best way to be able to believe in miracles is to learn how to perform them!

This paper, however, will deal solely with man’s place in history, which is only a section of the ranges of view which the study of the mesmeric phenomena forces into consideration. We want to know more about those who have controlled armies, nations, events, and themselves. We want to gain a better idea of the forces at work in the making of history; how far, if not entirely, man was responsible; how far, if at all, he was assisted in any peculiar way toward the acquirement of a farsightedness superior to that of his fellows; why historical events, both in their inception and action, were so peculiarly human and often so dreadfully animal; why the sought-for and acquired benefits have so often been mingled with distress and catastrophe.

These somewhat numerous inquiries are answered, in effect, by an exposition of the faculties referred to, and of the powers by which these may be forced into increased activity. When these are understood so far as they can be explained here, then the answers to all the above queries will become apparent to those who apply the facts to their knowledge of history; and they will need no more detailed answer than that which I shall give.

Many have noted the fact that the foremost personages of history have been men of great will-power. They might be French, Greek, Jew, or Moslem; they might be of any occupation, rank, or color; but always they were men of great will-power. This has been the one peculiarity common to all. But why should will-power be a sine qua non of greatness? The reasons will appear as we proceed.

In the year 1897 an attempt to explain mesmerism is not as necessary as it used to be. The amount of notice which the newspapers give to the subject suggests that an interest in it is very widespread in America. Even the most illiterate must now be aware that persons may be so influenced by the wills of others that they pass into a sleep, or a condition resembling sleep, during which they are to a large extent, and sometimes entirely, subject to the wills of the actuators. Professionals have also assisted in instructing the public as to the minor phenomena. One of them has lately been making money in New York by keeping his patient in the hypnotic trance for a week, during which ignorant medical students and doctors tried brutal methods of awakening the victim—the same methods which disgrace some of the hospitals when unfortunates pass into trances from unknown causes. In other cases, persons in the audience are requested to pencil secretly some lines on paper and hide the writings in their pockets. The patient on the stage then reads the writing, and this reading is subsequently compared with the hidden papers and found to be correct. The numbers engraved on people’s watches are also read in the same way.

I have never attended such performances because they had nothing to teach me; and if confederates were used, all I can say is that the performances could be given much more easily without confederates. My reason for mentioning these people is that their work, if genuine, as I suppose, allows me a greater brevity in this paper; also because their large numbers prove the truth of what I published long ago, that anyone of fairly strong will-power can perform these seeming marvels if a suitable patient can be procured. It may, however, be accepted as absolutely correct that the vision of mesmerized patients is not impeded by materials. In my earliest experiments I tried all kinds of receptacles when secreting articles. But the changes made no difference. The patients can discern the interior of an iron box as easily as we in the ordinary state can see through a glass one. Of course this has nothing to do with ordinary vision, the eyelids being closed at the time. All such trials as this I ranked in the lowest grade, because the patients may have been reading what was within my own knowledge—a faculty that was partly exhibited to prominent men in chief cities by Mr. Stuart Cumberland and Mr. Irving Bishop.

This classifying of my experiments is only to bring on their mention in the order in which they seem to increase in importance. As a fact, the same faculties attend to them all. Still, the division is useful. Second, then, come those which dealt with long distances. To one of my first patients (a messenger in a law-office) I showed scenes in Syria, Egypt, Athens, and Rome, and after I had removed him from the mesmeric sleep I handed him a pile of photographs which I had brought from foreign countries. He turned them over rapidly and picked out the picture of the scene he had witnessed, and without hesitation. I ranked all this class next to lowest in importance because I had the scenes in my own mind at the time. Yet the patients saw more than I was thinking of. When I showed this messenger the obelisk in front of St. Peter’s at Rome, he also described the great colonnade around the piazza, which I had at the moment forgotten. Subsequent experiments with others made me know that he was viewing the scene itself.

The class ranked third, or next higher, were those in which the patients were called from a distance. In the Arlington Heights Sanitarium some of the patients formerly received, and I suppose still receive, beneficial hypnotic treatment. One patient, Grace ——, could be called into the office at any time by the simple will of Dr. Ring, the proprietor. I received the account from a valued nurse who attended this patient in the hospital. I was able to do the same thing myself in one case, but only when the patient was at some occupation which did not require much concentration. I am not prepared to speak as to the spaces across which this influence may be exerted. With another patient, who was over two miles away, the experiment seemed fairly successful, but I am not sufficiently certain to claim a success.

In class four, the patients told facts which had not been previously within their knowledge or mine. For tests of this kind I would procure from friends some old coins wrapped up so that I could not know the dates on them. When the first patient with whom this was tried was told to pass into the sleep she called out the date of the coin almost instantaneously—“1793.” I thought she was still awake and guessing. But in that instant she had passed into a deep sleep and had told the date correctly.

In the fifth class the reader’s credence will be much tested. Many of the Scripture miracles were not a whit more difficult to believe. In fact, some were precisely the same. Professional frauds have created much hostility to the idea of anyone possessing clairvoyance. But the somewhat amusing fact is that every human being is a clairvoyant—which could be shown beyond disagreement if the doubter were placed in the mesmeric trance. An instructive experiment has lately been told me, in which the same patient, Grace ——, was used. A Mrs. Fuller, an invalid in the hospital, was anxious about her daughter, who had not lately written. Dr. Chapin, one of the house doctors, was the actuator. Under his will the faculties of Grace —— were made to see the child, then about thirty miles off. She described Mrs. Fuller’s home, its interior, the daughter coming from school with her books, whom she talked to, what she said, the precise time on a peculiar old clock in the room, and a call on a neighbor then made by the daughter—all of which was afterward proved to have been correctly reported. I mention Dr. Chapin’s work because it relieves me of some of the seeming egotism which a recital of this kind enforces, and because my own experiments, which were, in effect, precisely the same, though different in detail, have been published elsewhere.[16]

As if these facts were not astounding enough, we come finally to a sixth class, in which we find that these marvels can be produced by one’s own will-power acting on one’s own interior faculties—the proofs of which I have already published.

Now here, I submit, we get our right clew to the true position of man in history. We now see why great men had always to be possessed of peculiar will-power. They were great when the intensities of their ambitions, desires, or necessities forced from their soul-faculties some portions of knowledge which gave them a temporary ascendency, such, for instance, as would provide an advantage in strategy, statecraft, duplicity, treachery, or any other qualities which have assisted men who were leaders. There was no limit to this, for the experiments show that there is some quality in the soul of man that seems to be omniscient, or in direct correspondence with omniscience.

It was always through stress. None have become great in idleness or slackened energies. And as soon as the stress ceased, after the occasion for the intense strivings of years passed, when the fruits of victory were being enjoyed, when the aim of life was simply to hold and not to gain, then the man ceased to be markedly different from others. Then other men lead, because nature’s leaderships are gained by that intensest concentration which forces the best methods from the soul-faculties. Apply this system of nature to any great event of history and you will invariably find it accomplishing the known results. There you will find a man making a name for himself, and, in a sense, making history. Always through stress, strain, and necessity, in the same ways that extraordinary ingenuity comes to men and animals to assist their escape from situations of dire peril. Lock up the human wild beasts who agonize for liberty, and you will find that few jails will hold them. And their escapes may well be called miraculous.

The question then comes back for answer: What about this “universal causation”?—Fate?—the will of God? Here it must be said, as before, that no event of history can be selected which cannot be honestly referred to the intelligence of man when this has been assisted by a partial use of his soul-faculties. When human projects ran foul of natural laws, disaster followed. For instance, the acquirement of a new territory may take a vast amount of energy and heroic fighting—and the will of one man may then be paramount in making a fact of history coupled with his name; but if the army of occupation dies in the swamps of the conquered country, shall the disaster be attributed to God? Shall we not rather say that if the events of history were in His intended control they would be less cruel, less human, less bestial? Can anyone trace a lasting benefit that arose from Napoleon’s career? The meteor disappeared into impalpable dust. The conquered lands returned to their owners. Was any country improved by his coming? He left a bloody trail through Egypt, but not till the last decade has the Egyptian fellah known a whiff of liberty or justice for two thousand years. The only outcome that lasts to the present day is the assisted vanity of the French people, a vanity built on the abilities of one man, which were lost to the country when he died. Does anyone see a trace of the will of God in all this? I do not.

His Corsican mother bore him while she attended her husband in his battles. The offspring was marked for war in his mother’s womb. He was preËminently a natural product; and in him we find indomitable will continually concentrated on faculties which yielded the discernments that made him master of men and master of war. No man came under his scrutiny without feeling that he was read to the core. The weaknesses, strengths, vanities, braveries, and ambitions of others were all read, used, and played upon for one man’s ends. And from Bismarck back to Cyrus we find all the great ones ruling in the same way—through the discernments that are will-forced from the soul-faculties.

But among lesser men, and in everyday life? Here, the same, only in lesser degrees; not with a knowledge of the processes at work, and thus without the conscious direction of effort which would produce more satisfactory results; though often the world is astonished when the extraordinary introspection of some business men enables them to make money in all their dealings. This is not luck. Their amassed wealth is the proof of their life’s strain—almost another name for it. And it should be remarked, in passing, that most of the great ones have been deeply religious in their own ways. Jay Gould was deeply religious in his own way, though I am told he wrecked many. So is Bismarck. So were Wellington and Von Moltke—men who guided frightful carnage. We may smile at the religion which wrecks and kills and prays, but we do not remove the combination; and it is probable that the great ones have been too closely conscious of their own sudden discernments to find a gross materialism possible. It was the same with the pagans. Even Bonaparte had an implicit belief in what he called his lucky star.

The followers of Buckle claim that man is personally hardly more than a cipher in history, that his name is hardly worth writing in the great scroll. But how is this when the fate of Europe rests, as it may rest at this moment, wholly and solely in the faculties of one man? The instinct of hero-worship is too deep-set to be valueless. And the experiments which do so much to explain the sources of increased human knowledge point to the fact that it is in the man of the hour that the history of the hour is written. One leads; the others follow. Gifted he may be, even before he is born; endowed he may be, by forefathers who were clean; but when the event approaches there is always one who more than others realizes the stress, strain, or peril, and in a mighty effort creates from his own faculties a scheme or plan which others are glad to follow.

That is greatness. That is history. That is creation. For creation is of spirit; and man, as these seemingly trivial experiments prove, is also, in part, of spirit. The disasters that may result through other causes from his action are only the proof of his humanness—proof that his strain for enlightenment was not continued. In these ways history is human, but always with a partly secreted and godlike faculty awaiting demand. “Seek, and ye shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” The greatest man that ever lived taught this. And whatever he was, or was not, he knew more than any other man.

This article is by no means intended to suggest that the will of God need not be considered in the study of history. When it is proved that human privacy is impossible, and that any ordinary person’s soul may be made to see us at all times, then we may be quite sure that the Giver of these faculties to man possesses them himself and that we are watched both personally and nationally. But the article is intended to suggest that man has progressed and has been great when the exercise of his will-power, or the concentrated desire of prayer, has forced his interior faculties, perhaps through their correspondences, to help him through enlightenment. We find ourselves placed on this planet in total ignorance as to why we came or where we go, but there seems to be one continuous purpose through all—that man shall improve. It may be that high intelligence, combined with experience in all grades of life, is required somewhere else. It may be that in order to gain such experience it must be lived through. There would certainly be no striving if everything came to us as an unearned gift. The disasters resulting from one man’s action are a warning to the next venturer; and if experience is not, or cannot be, sent into a soul as an unearned gift, then the higher wisdom may be non-interference.

The estimate of man’s personal agency in history is necessarily raised when the faculties he has utilized in gaining his ends are inquired into. Such a study seems to lead toward an alteration in the accepted idea of divine control in matters of history when it suggests this intention—that the divinity of a right control shall be shown through man. Such a study shows that he is sufficiently endowed with a spiritual nature, not only for this purpose, but for any other; and it suggests that, as his faculties bring him into direct connection with some All-knowledge from which every kind of intelligence may be drawn, he is expected to use his opportunities; also that the natural consequences of mistakes will not be rectified except through the intelligence supplied to further demand.