BP 131 .N64 * 1 : ■ ^ m \ I ;- \\ • 21I1S LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. Chap. A..... Copyright No Shelf__»._ __ UNITED STATES OF AA1ER1CA. mzM^. III M m«m XW4.4 & Ye Tfyoroiigfybred. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from The Library of Congress http://www.archive.org/details/yethoroughbredOOcour Ye Thoroughbred By NOVUS HOMO. It THREE INTERVIEWS: I. Man as an Animal. II. Man as a Magnetic Battery and an Ei,ectro- Tei,Egraphic Machine. III. Man Americanized. The Great Republic ; Its Status, Dangers, Duties, and its Future. New York, the heaeth-cui/ture COMPANY No. 30 East 14th Street. 1896. 4\* Copyright 1896, BY THE HEAI^TH-CUI/TURE COMPANY. LC Control Numbe tmp96 025784 PREFACE. Brotherly words of a Briton to his fellow-men at home and broad ; with a special message to ' ' Brother Jonathan. ' ' Novus Homo. January, i8g6. FIRST INTERVIEW. To improve the breed of the genus homo is the foremost duty of man. FIRST INTERVIEW. MAN AS AN ANIMAI,. " No, my dear Juvenis, there is no denying the sad fact that the average man is a very low-grade animal!" Such was the exclamation of my dear old friend, the Senior, when we had comfortably seated ourselves in his cozy sanctum to enjoy a cup of delicious Mocha after dinner, on the evening of a day of sight-seeing at our Annual Agricultural Show. " Yes, my dear Juvenis, to-day's magnificent Agri- cultural 'Exposition,' as it might well be called, clearly demonstrated the all-important, but humiliating fact that of all the domesticated animals on exhibition, the human were of the lowest average grade!" And with increased warmth and emphasis, he ex- claimed: "Of the exhibitors and exhibited on the show grounds to-day, the latter, take them all in all, were the thoroughbred animals; and precious few of the former, including ' our noble selves,' would have been awarded a 'first prize' by intelligent and im- partial judges! 8 Y£ THOROUGHBRED. " Yes, indeed, most of the human bipeds on the grounds were third or fourth -rate animals ; and not a few of them were 'out of the count' altogether. " Why, forsooth, poor 'Hodge' was pitiable to look upon, compared with the splendid pigs and cattle that he tended. And of the magnificent draught, carriage, and saddle-horses, pray tell me, which, in general, were the real thoroughbred animals, their drivers, their owners, or the horses?" Being quite overcome by this outburst, I fortified myself with a fresh cup of Mocha. Mine host, the Senior, continued: " Yes, indeed, when as much cultivated common sense and true science are exercised in raising human animals as are now so generally exercised in breeding domestic fowls, and pigs, and sheep, and cattle, and horses, the long looked-for human millenium will begin, and not until then." Almost breathless with astonishment, I exclaimed: " My dear Senior, you are surely forgetful of man's higher nature!" " Not in the least, my dear Juvenis. And while I have no desire to intrench upon the proper sphere of parson, priest, or pedagogue, yet they even may be none the worse by hearing from a friendly layman. The sooner we all get down to 'rock-bottom facts' in regard to these all- important matters, the better it will be for us as individuals* and for mankind. MAN AS AN ANIMAI,. 9 "Yes, the fact is, and I repeat it with increased emphasis: Man, the world over, is positively and comparatively a very low-grade animal; and the im- provement in any species has hitherto been largely the result of favoring circumstances, good luck, haphazard chance, or mere lottery, and but in small part the re- sult of the exercise of enlightened common sense and intelligent obedience to the laws of nature on the part of man himself; and hence also why it is that the per- centage of human imbeciles, low-grades, and mon- strosities of every kind, is so preponderatingly and, as some aver, increasingly large, with the ever accom- panying concomitants of incurable diseases, helpless or vicious lives and deplorable deaths. ' ' t ' But, my dear Senior, it is to be borne in mind that 'we are what we are,' that we did not make our- selves." 1 ' Yes, yes, my dear Juvenis, and therein, for the most part, lies the gist of the whole matter. We are what we are, chiefly because of whatjour progenitors were, because of our environments, and because of what we ourselves have done, or have not done. But herein also arises the all-important question: 'What shall those be who come after us, of whom we may be the progenitors ?' ' ' Yes, of all the most frequently omitted, the oft neglected, and the generally unconsidered human duties, is my duty and my responsibility to those who. tO Y£ THOROUGHBRED. may become bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh ; while, in fact, of all human duties and responsibilities, this is the greatest, and the neglect of which is most dishonorable, unmanly, and criminal even, in the highest degree." " But, my dear Senior, you seem to forget that there is an overruling Providence in all these things," ' ' Not at all, my dear Juvenis. No one more firmly believes in an all- wise, overruling Providence than I do. The very name which "we' thus humbly and de- voutly apply to the great I AM] should remove that doubt, since it literally signifies a foreseeing and fore- arranging all things wisely and well, which man should studiously copy and obediently follow in all things, and in nothing more than in regard to those who are to succeed him, of his own very kith and kin. But fie on the very best of human kind! Nearly the opposite of all such is the case, and hence mere chance or blind fate rules the destinies of the human race. When, indeed, will thoughtless and cruel man take as much real practical interest in the good qualities which his child, may inherit as in those of the calf or the colt which he may rear ? And again, I still more emphatically enquire : When will as much sanctified common sense, real knowledge, and wise forethought be exercised in regard to raising human beings as are now so generally exercised in raising other animals of almost every kind ? MAN AS AN ANIMAL. 1 1 " Oh, for a more than trumpet voice to make every human being hear this heaven's evangel of the physical regeneration of humanity, and the accompanying and consequent higher and still higher development of man's instinctive, electrical, mental, moral and spirit- ual capabilities! "Most human guides of to-day, and of the long ages past, have, in general, all but 'reversed' the plan of nature and of nature's God for the regenerative perfectibility of the human race; and hence failure, all but complete, is everywhere manifest as the sad result. 1 ' Witness in proof thereof that the nations wherein this ' reversed' system of nature, and of grace even, has had its fullest scope and longest sway and domination, contain the largest percentage of human beings sunk in the lowest depths of ignorance and barbarity ; and hence to-day - Darkest Europe' exceeds ' Darkest Africa' in its mass of foulness of human depravity ! " The animal perfectibility of man should ever be the ' alpha' of all human effort ; and, in inevitable consequence, the ' omega' of true individual and gen- eral progress and perfectibility in all else, will certainly follow as the result of proper bodily, instinctive, moral, and mental training, and of true spiritual enlightenment !" "But, my dear Senior, you appear to forget how much the superior races have progressed even in their blindness, of which you speak so emphatically.' ' 12 YE THOROUGHBRED. " There it is again, my dear Juvenis — the unhappy and the insufferable ' egotism' of the individual crys- talized into a ( racial creed' ! The superior races, for- sooth, and yet, if asked to name these superior races, you, like most others, would first and foremost name your own nationality ; next you would hesitatingly name a very few others ; and then you would shortly stop from very shame, or from fear of giving mortal offense ! ' ' And thus it always is and always has been everywhere from farthest India to I^and's End ! It is always Ind and Ethiop, Jew and Gentile, Greek and Barbarian, Christian and Heathen. In one unhappy form or another, it is always Ego et tu, great / and little u, and all the while oblivious to the patent though paradoxical fact that, ever and anon, the big- gest individual of either species has been and is bigger than the biggest individual of either of the others ; and that the possibly continuous races have capabili- ties of all but indefinite improvement in their own habitats and in bettered environments ; and that m the world's economy each is a necessary complement of every other. ' ' Yes, yes, and this much-boasted progress too ! Why, my dear Juvenis, in all the past, and even amongst the best circumstanced races of men, it has ever been more like the fitful rising and falling of ocean's waves, or the flood and ebbing of its tides, than MAN AS AN ANIMAL. 1 3 as it ought to be — the steady uplifting of humanity to a higher and still higher plane in all that is good and beneficent. ' 'True, I gladly admit that there has been and is much of real beneficent progress amongst some of the vari- ous races in many ways ; and, in some respects, never more than among our own people at home and abroad in our own day. But after all, comparatively speak- ing, how very limited it is ; and even amongst the most favored peoples, how much of it is really aught but progress in the ways and means of selfish ' greed and grab', and poor man himself remains, in general, but the same average low-grade animal ; and the lines of cleavage between the classes and the masses, whether of the older or of the newer types, still remain, and the latter are often broader, deeper, and more selfish than the former ! "Yes, indeed, my dear Juvenis, I greatly rejoice that much real progress has been made amongst some peoples in many ways, but I need hardly remind you that many of the highest developments of this or any other intermediate age among any people, seem bald when compared with like outcomes in farthest India many milleniums ago — as witness the most cer- tain ocular proof thereof in the wondrously perfect and still extant language of that people in the remotest of most remote known ages. Nor can you be unmindful of the ' L,ost Arts' of Damascus, Syria, and Egypt ; 14 Y£ Thoroughbrkd. neither need you be reminded that our own seemingly all-powerful £. s. d. , nor the ' almighty dollar' of our progressive cousins across the sea, could secure a syndicate of architects and mechanicians to erect a com- plete counterpart of ' the great pyramid.' And, more- over, my dear Juvenis, it cannot be successfully denied that much of the so-called ' best philosophic thought' of to-day, seems but plagiarized from that of the oldest known times ! ' ' Hence, let us duly moderate our ' boast' of our unequalled 'modern progress', respectfully reduce the dimensions of the great / and sensibly increase those of the little u; since, by my troth, man's highest interests lie in magnifying the latter to those of a goodly-sized capital, so as to hasten the coming of the true ' golden age' when everywhere it may be great / and equal U." But, in sheer amazement, I ventured to remark : 1 ' My dear Senior, are you not fast becoming a hopeless pessimist?" 1 ' Not at all, my dear Juvenis. On the contrary, I am but speaking the words of truth and soberness which my brother men throughout the whole world will soon hear to some purpose. In fact, my dear Juvenis, I am in stern reality, a veritable optimist in all things that pertain to the physical perfectibility of man, in accordance with the unalterable laws of his being ; and the many grand specimens of true all-round man- MAN AS AN ANIMAL. 15 hood and womanhood now existing in every species of the ge?ius homo, which is within the pale of human racial redemption, is positive ocular proof beyond all faithless doubt or possible peradventure, of what, in ever broadening expansion, awaits man's increasing knowledge of, and more perfect obedience to, the irre- vocable laws which govern his procreation and the genuine unfoldment of all his wondrous capabilities. "And viewing man from the mere animal stand- point, which is the real foundation of the whole human superstructure, and bearing in mind the amazing * animal' improvement witnessed at our Agricultural Exposition to-day, and duly considering one of the aptest illustrations expressed in the tersest of plain Knglish by our go-ahead American cousins, that if ' a colt can be bred and trained to do a mile in two minutes, ' what then cannot be done in breeding all domestic animals (man included) in all possible and desirably good qualities ? "There, now, I hope you fully understand me. And no one can appreciate more fully than yourself that, in speaking plainly on this most important of all human facts, duties, and responsibilities, plain, truth- ful language need not offend the most refined ear nor perturb the most sensitive heart. The purest and most intelligently cultured men and women of to-day manifest the most lively interest in the improvement of all domestic animals, as witness the intelligen 1 6 Y3 Thoroughbred. remarks and criticisms made by large numbers of such — the ladies even, both matrons and maids — at our Agricultural Show to-day ! "Yes, my dear Juvenis, in no other way are the dawnings of a new and grander civilization more man- ifest than in the fact that humaneness is becoming more and more recognized as a cardinal human virtue. L,et such humaneness towards other animals be also pre- eminently exercised towards our own selves, towards our own kith and kin, towards our own species, and towards our own genus ; and the divine work of which I now speak will be well begun." 1 'But, my dear Senior, are you not forgetting that there are unknown, and to man unknowable, causes, con- ditions, and circumstances which are beyond his con- trol and direction in all these things?" i l Far from it, my dear Juvenis, for do we not see every day, as it were, how readily and with seeming willingness, mother Nature yields up her hitherto sup- posed-to-be most mysterious inorganic and organic secrets to the experimental scientist, or to the thought- ful observer ; and how, almost continuously, the supposed occult forces are being caught, so to speak, and harnessed and made obediently subservient to man. ( ' And besides, does the thoughtful and skillful per- son who successfully raises perfected flower, or fruit, or grain, or bird, or animals of any kind, talk as you MAN AS AN ANlMAt. 17 now do of the unknown and unknowable causes, con- ditions, facts, and circumstances beyond his ken and control in these things ? " Not at all ; but on the contrary, see how intelli- gently, perseveringly, and scientifically he observes, thinks, reasons, experiments, and acts ; and hence the truly wonderful perfection being attained thereby in the vegetable and animal world. 1 ' The sad fact, however, is that ' progressive man* is but beginning to give thought, and skill, and care, to the improved reproduction of all useful and orna- mental living things — except himself, a chief reason for which, doubtless, is that he has discovered that 1 there is money' in the former, but that he has not yet fully discovered that there is not only ' money' but in- finitely more than ' money' in the latter, namely, health and happiness, and an increased and increas- ing capacity to make himself and others ' healthy, wealthy, and wise' ! ' ' It surely cannot be, my dear Juvenis, that man, the head of the animal creation, the noblest work of God, shall ever thus leave the procreation of his own species to the sad chapter of accidents, and attribute the woeful results of his own ignorance, neglect, and criminality to 'the will of God,' when all the while the will of the Creator is that every child born into the world, be perfect and still more perfect ' after his kind.'" 1 8 m THOROUGHBRED. "But, my c^ear Senior, are you not somewhat unmindful of the vast good that is being done in the education of the rising generation ?" 1 ' Not in the least, my dear Juvenis. On the con- trary, no one more highly appreciates the value, or more firmly believes in the imperative necessity, of giving a thorough elementary education to every youth in the Commonwealth, and no one more rejoices in the betterment and expansion in our own and in other lands of higher popular education in all the liberal and industrial arts and sciences. But taking into ac- count successive generations of the whole population, how limited, imperfect, and unsatisfactory is the pres- ent percentage of permanently good and beneficent re- sults ! The few are improved, but what of the many ? "Yes, my dear Juvenis, the conscientious parent, the generous philanthropist, the duty-performing State, and the laborious efforts of the ablest educators, are ever confronted with the multitudinous manifestations of the stubborn, 'rock-bottom' fact, so forcibly ex- pressed in the homely adage: 'A silk purse cannot be made out of a pig's ear!' * ' The original material must be good, or it cannot be wrought and polished into excellence and beauty. ' ' The human youth, like any other young animal, must, by inheritance, have high perfection 'after his kind,' else the best of training can do but little towards MAN AS AN ANIMAI,. 1 9 making him an equal, much less a superior, among his fellow-youths better than himself by inheritance. 1 ' In fact, the best of care and the best of training of the babe and youth can but partially mitigate or partially stave off the inevitably sad outcomes and re- sults of weakly, diseased, evilly biased, or other ab- normal inheritances, whether they be bodily, instinc- tive, mental, moral, or spiritual. No care nor training can transform the body of a child radically diseased and polluted into a pure, healthy adult human being. " Nature's law is that 'like begets like.' And mak- ing every conceivable, or even every 'miraculous, ' al- lowance, it remains true, in general, that as the child is born so and such will he live and die. " A sad fact also is that education, so-called, makes the ' natural-born thief a more expert adult robber ; and so it is likewise through the whole gamut of depraved and vicious inheritances. " Oh, yes, my dear Juvenis, many have learned much by what is popularly called education, but very few have yet learned the alphabet of the facts and laws of perfective human procreation, which is the true basis of all beneficial education ; and, triste dirtu, fewer still sensibly practice what they do know. "The divine command, 'Man, know thyself, and govern thyself accordingly,' is emblazoned on every page of the open book of nature ! He who runs may read, and none disobey with impunity. Grace, too, 20 Y£ THOROUGHBRED. proclaims, and all observation and experience confirm the stern but beneficent decree of nature, that the man is criminal who blindly or knowingly begets offspring incurably diseased or physically imperfect and viciously depraved." " But, my dear Senior, you surely must concede that the conditions differ ; man has entire control over the lower animals." " Quite true ; it must be conceded that the proper control of the humane man over the other and, in some respects and qualities, lower animals, does measurably facilitate their constantly improved reproduction and trained perfection. But who not bereft of reason and common sense, will aver that the like facts, the like knowledge, and like skill, together with like motives, ends, and aims, have not a like, and even a far grander application to the perfected procreation and still more perfective culture of human animals ; and that man is not abundantly capable of evolving the more difficult ' how' of their application to the progressive bodily perfection of his own species, in like manner as he has done, and is constantly doing, in the wondrous per- fection already attained by him in the breeding and training of the lower animals ? " Yes, yes, my dear Juvenis, most of the so-called insuperable difficulties said to stand in the way of the like progressive improvement of the genus homo y con- tsidered as human animals, are purely imaginary; and MAN AS AN ANIMAI,. 2 1 the very day that all the now teaching and teachable of human beings — men and women — fairly and honestly set themselves about the due examination and candid consideration of their all-important responsibilities and duties to themselves and to their offspring, on the lines now set forth, half the supposed difficulties in the way will at once disappear, and the dawn of the millenial era of progressive human bodily perfectibility will appear. ' ' ' ■ But, my dear Senior, how do you account for it that this all-important matter, as you call it, has hitherto been so little heeded?" 11 Chiefly, my dear Juvenis, because of the dense ig- norance of most men and women — both teachers and taught— of the facts and laws of human procreation and human heredity. ' ' Many are profoundly learned in almost every other department of human knowledge; and, happily, by voice and pen, and by the printing press, they com- municate what they have learned to their fellow-men. But pray, tell me, what student of man has acquired and has thus imparted a like inerrant knowledge of the essential rudiments even of this the most import- ant of all human knowledge ? ' ' Innumerable text-books exist upon almost every other science, but where is even one such like text- book to be found on this most fundamentally import- ant of the sciences ? 22 YE THOROUGHBRED. " Many noble institutions of learning have trained and dubbed all but unnumbered masters of arts and of sciences, and a host of doctors (teachers) of divinity, of law, of medicine, and the like, but pray, tell me, where is there one of all these graduates duly and right- fully entitled to be called a master, much less a doctor, of this science of all sciences, namely, an exact and systematized knowledge of the facts and laws of human procreation, human heredity , and of real human culture? "Pray, tell me also, what school, college, or uni- versity in the wide world has a professor on its staff of instructors whose sole duty it is to acquire such like knowledge, and impart such like instruction in this science as is now generally so well and so thoroughly done in the sciences of language, mathematics, phil- osophy, chemistry, geology and the like ? The sad fact is, my dear Juvenis, that this fundamental and practically most valuable of all human sciences has been and still is all but wholly tabooed, ignored, and suppressed in most homes, in most institutions of learning, and in most lecture-rooms, excepting certain limited instruction given in medical and veterinary schools. * ' Will such woeful ignorance and such woeful want of instruction be suffered much longer to prevail ? I trow not. " Moreover, my dear Juvenis, another sad fact is that in all ages the chiefest concern of tyrants and MAN A3 AN ANIMAL. 23 oppressors of every kind, has been the aggregating and utilizing of human beings as mere 'hewers of wood and drawers of water' — in short, as mere beasts of burden for the oppressors' own advantage and aggran- dizement ; and although spasmodic manifestations thereof are observable in almost every age throughout the known history of the world, yet it is only in our own day, as it were, that the grand, the divine fact that the masses of mankind were not created for the aggrandizement of the classes, has been evangelically proclaimed and given practical form and embodiment. And j^et, even to this very hour, witness with what unhuman ingenuity oppressors of every sort are frantic- ally seeking to continue to lord it over man and his divine heritage, and to keep the masses of their fellow- men in subservient bondage of body, mind, and spirit; and hence they are perpetually warring against the beneficent decree of nature that all men, ' after their kind,' are endowed by their Creator with equal inher- ent rights, privileges, and prerogatives ; and hence that they are equally entitled to all possible, practic- able means, opportunities, and assistance even in what- ever pertains to their betterment in all things, according to their susceptibility and capacity for progressive perfectibility 'after their kind;' for nature's flat is, infinite variety, infinite diversity in all things animate and inanimate, and hence a possible beneficent unity in diversity. 24 Y # THOROUGHBRED. ' ' Moreover, and I beg with due emphasis to repeat that it is but in our own day that among many of any class of beneficent toilers with hand or head, the pos- sible realization of the physical regeneration and pro- gressive bodily perfectibility of mankind has become an article of human faith, and a matter of practical human belief. "And with 'line upon line and precept upon precept,' I cannot but reiterate that such, in great part, has doubtless come about from such and such like facts as we have witnessed to-day, showing that amongst intel- ligent agriculturists, and others, the improved perfecti- bility of domestic animals has in a very few generations advanced fully one- third of one hundred per cent., and that the good work still goes steadily on. "Man, in part, therefore, has begun seriously to enquire whether the same facts and the same principles do not in like manner apply to his own animal perfecti- bility, and, as I have before said, nature's plan for the individual and racial regeneration of man has, in general, been all but 'reversed' hitherto; and hence real human betterment and progress have been but partial, reactive, and sadly fitful and limited. "Besides, as I have said, this all-important subject has, to a humiliating extent, been systematically tabooed, and the stern facts in regard to it have been practically ignored, until even in this our own day the conditions of most human procreations are even below MAN AS AN ANIMAL. 2$ those of most tmdomesticated animals; and hence the low grade of mankind in ' Darkest England ' are of a lower grade, ' after their kind, ' than those in 'Darkest Africa.' And yet, with the pious complaisancy of the Pharisee, we thank God that we are not as other men, while, at the same time, the charge against us is not wholly without justification that we seek to impose our boasted 'civilization' upon the inhabitants of the 1 Dark Continent ' by giving them a ' Bible ' with one hand, and a bottle of ' whiskey ' with the other; and, alas, also that our chief instruments hitherto for the * civilization ' of the so-called ' heathen Chinee, ' have been ' bullets of lead ' and ' pellets of opium ' ! " But, my dear Juvenis, to return from this somewhat abrupt, but not wholly irrelevant, ' aside' from the main point under consideration, I unhesitatingly state without fear of successful contradiction, that in all the so-called most highly ' civilized' countries, and not always in what are styled the lowest ranks of society, multitudes of children are born every year who, by their inherited instincts, are naturally ' crim- inals' and from birth are preponderatingly prone to what is humanly bad and brutal (apologizing to the average "brute" for this grave misuse of the word), and they who blindly or knowingly are the forbears of such, incur tremendous responsibilities, the awful consequences of which are beyond all human calcu- lations ! 26 Y3 THOROUGHBRED. " The undeniable fact is that the bodily make the natural qualities, and inherited instincts and appetites of a human being are the real foundations, the sum and substance of all within him and of him that is or will be good or bad of every kind ! ' ' The law of nature is, as is the child, so will be the man, and hence the child is father of the man. And back of all this lies the question of infinite import, What shall the child be, and how shall he be and become the most perfect and perfective * after his kind?'" ' ' But, my dear Senior, is not such beyond the capacity and power of man to accomplish ?" ' ' Not at all, my dear Juvenis, as is ocularly manifest from the numbers of now living individuals and fami- lies of the highest ' all-round' grade of human animals that ever existed among any people in any age or in any country ; and these notable exceptions incontestably prove the actuality and the general applicability of the rule or law. Besides, this question of yours is of no force nor effect unless it can be shown (as it cannot be) that the same facts and the same laws applicable to the breeding and training of the lower animals, are not substantially and in like manner applicable to the procreation and education of ' human animals ;' and it would be the merest folly to assume, and worse than folly to affirm, that man is not capable of taking cog- MAN AS AN ANIMAt. 27 nizance of such facts and laws of his being and success- fully applying them to himself and to his offspring. " Moreover, to state in varied form what I have already intimated, carefully note the goodly number of those in different ranks of society who, having in- herited comparatively pure and perfect bodies, have by comparatively upright lives, by considerately well- assorted marriages, and by the intelligent care and culture of their offspring, richly enjoy the highest human felicity of having families of even better sons and daughters than they themselves were or are. And, by my troth, were it not because of such pillars of wisdom, strength, and beauty, the whole fabric of so- ciety would speedily collapse or be thrown down in anarchic ruin, as has so often been the case in past ages with peoples who had become honeycombed with corruption, and hence whose name even has become but an historical remembrance. Man's body is the real starting point in the race of permanent human im- provement and social progress. " Half the substance of the now better portion of mankind is expended in what is called 'charity,' in comparatively futile endeavors to mitigate or cure what should have been almost wholly ' prevented;' or by taxation in providing the means of protection of their own selves and substance from the assaults and grasp of the baser sort of mankind. " Most, also, of the hitherto generally 'reversed' and 2.3 YE THOROUGHBRED. almost wholly ' misdirected' efforts for the renovation of mankind and of society, have their unhappily too apt illustration in the fable of Sysiphus, who, as a punishment for his depredations in Attica, was com- pelled to roll a large stone up a mountain in the in- fernal regions, which, however, always rolled down again. ' ' In our social inferno, an end can and must be put to all such and such like futile processes as have marked and marred the long, dark and dreary past." 1 ' But, my dear Senior, would not the attainment of the animal perfectibility of man, of which you speak with so much warmth, be all but hopelessly slow ?' ' "Yes, in general, my dear Juvenis, comparatively slow but sure, as all of nature's processes of improved and improving growth and upbuilding are. The world was not made in an hour, nor was Iyondon built in a day. The mighty oak or the stately elm is the growth of many years. An improved breed of domestic animals is the resultant of several generations; and so of man. " 'Hopelessly slow V Not at all, for let me remind you that while an individual may speedily wreck himself, like as an incendiary may quickly destroy the finest superstructure, the degradation of man is, in general, the outcome of long-continued malgenerations, and that mother Nature never has left, and never can leave, her whole world-wide family stranded in hopeless MAN AS AN ANIMAL. 2£ degradation. Scattered groups of such there are and have been, but beneficent nature consigns such alone to elemental dust as are unredemptively on the down- ward grade thither. Nor should it be forgotten that seldom, indeed, at any time or anywhere, has there been a Sodom that ten righteous men could not have saved. Neither should it be forgotten that the terms destructive and redemptive may be, and in their ulti- mate analysis are, in nature's economy alike benefi- cent, and that life and death are necessary correlatives. " 'Hopelessly slow?' No, my dear Juvenis, see, as I have before said, the now happily increasing numbers of true men and women coming forward from every rank, to the foremost walks of life, who fully realize that what they are and what they may be are chiefly due, first, to their good bodily inheritances; second, to their well upbringing; and next, to their own rightful and skillful utilization of their environments. All such men and women are more and more fully realizing that the first of these is the real foundation of what follows, and hence they are becoming more and more imbued with the best of all parental desires, that they who may be begotten of them shall be, bodily and other- wise, as good or better than themselves. They know that such is not the result of mere chance or lot, but of intelligent choice, and of manly and womanly obedience to the laws of nature governing their own 30 Y£ THOROUGHBRED. and others' being. Hence all such are diligently seek- ing for the truth concerning these all-important things, and they are more and more requiring that those who would instruct and guide them and theirs by voice or pen, or printing press, shall themselves know more, and teach more of these things of infinite import which belong to everyday life and being, and which are now generally, if not criminally, being ignored by them. The demand is being made, too, by all such truly enlightened men and women, and in unmistak- able terms, that they and their children shall no longer be fed on the ' chaff and husks ' of the mystic, metaphysical, superficial, and superstitious jargon of the schoolmen of the dark ages, but with what pertains to true life, growth, prosperity, and happiness in the living present. " Hence, also, we see everywhere humane, that is, truly human, men and women caring not alone for their own weal and that of their own children, but also for others' weal; yea, even for the weal of the millions yet to be. And while they cease not in seeking to alleviate or cure the ills afflicting themselves and others, their thoughts and acts are being directed more and more to the prevention of such ills, knowing fully the vast import in these things of the too oft unheeded truth in the trite and homely adage, that ' an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.' " MAN AS AN ANIMAL. 3 1 " But, my dear Senior, what of the masses of man- kind, and especially the congested masses, in large cities?" "The masses, my dear Juvenis, as I have before intimated, are rapidly coming to know in a most practical way that they were not born to be mere serfs. And see how rapidly in our own Britain, the heretofore partition walls between the so-styled classes and the masses are crumbling; and how often men and women, sprung from the long down-trodden masses, are coming to the front in every walk of life; and see, especially in many parts of the Western World, the almost total breaking up and overthrow of such false and invidious distinctions. " Men, too, are fast learning that the gospel of labor is the foremost of the bread and butter evangels ; that not mere rank, so-called, but real worth makes the true man. And the time is not far distant when these and like important truths will leaven the whole mass. ( ' They are rapidly learning also, that the pedigree of worth is the only real patent of nobility ; that the true gentleman is of nature's handiwork, beautified and adorned by generous culture and upright conduct, whatever may be his rank in society or his occupation in life ; and that he who in some true sense is not a working man, is measurably a pariah — a useless or injurious creature— in the economy of true human society, and must be treated accordingly. 32 Yn THOROUGHBRED. 1 ' The whole realm of nature is one vast workshop, and, be it spoken with reverence, the God of Nature is the great Master Workman. Said the Son of Man : ' L My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. ' ' ' Yes, also, you pertinently ask : What of the con- gested masses of mankind in large cities ? ' ' True, my dear Juvenis, the stern problem of the congested masses of shunted humanity in our great cities ever confronts us ; but, pray, tell me why such congested towns and cities should exist at all as they generally now are and have hitherto been amongst most peoples ? "As now constituted, they are not only not a necessity, but they are the greatest blemishes on our modern civilization. In fact, they are relics of barbarism and the great pest centers of the world. "Among all tolerably civilized peoples, intramural residence for safety has long ceased to be a necessity ; and now, in defensive warfare, large cities are gener- ally the greatest weaknesses of a nation. ' ' Favorably situated emporiums for the reception, interchange, and distribution of home and foreign products are a necessity; and manufacturing and busi- ness centers are required for the general welfare and advantage; but, pray, why should they be or become places of residence or centers of congested population ? ' ' There is clearly no necessity therefor, and human well-being demands radical reformation thereof. MAN AS AN ANIMAL. 33 " An enormous percentage of the congested popula- tion of large cities inevitably becomes corrupt and cor- rupting. The very earth within and around generally becomes a mass of putrefaction. The waters are pol- luted, the atmosphere is constantly surcharged with much that is foul and pestilential, and multitudes of places of abode are saturated with uncleansable cor- ruption except, perchance, by conflagration. Such a city is a huge den of vice; a hotbed of disease; a vast pesthouse; and should not be allowed to exist in the rightly -ordered economy of an enlightened civilization. There is evidently an as yet unfathomed depth of all- important truth in the old but too often unheeded adage: * God made the country, but man made the city/ ' ' A great emporium should not be a place of resi- dence. The chiefs of business may reside in the nearer suburbs as required, but all laborers and other em- ployees should, at the close of work-hours, be radiated to every required distance by cheap, safe, and expedi- tious transportation. Bating obvious necessities, none but the proper force for due guardianship and protection should be allowed to be within the city during the night. ' ' The now tens of square miles of suburban I/mdon indicate the trend of events affecting large cities every- where. The increasing number of workingmen's villages, wherein often all the families of workmen 34 Y3 THOROUGHBRED. have their own separate dwellings and gardens, is an- other omen of the happiest import in the same direc- tion. ' ' Note also the modifying of the older and the modelling of the newer rising cities of America on the lines above indicated, and whereby a grand beginning is,being made in that fair land of hope, of promise, and of fruition, towards the solution of the hitherto fearful problem of what can be done for the amelioration of the now so generally congested masses of population in large cities. ' ' Yes, my dear Juvenis, the total daily dispersion of the toiling city multitudes to rural homes, is what true humanity dictates and the common weal imperatively demands. ' ' ' ' But, my dear Senior, what of the thousands who do not work?" ( ' Well, my dear Juvenis, it is fast coming to be looked upon as an axiom by fairly civilized mankind, that he who can work and does not have some useful employment, is not only his own enemy, but that he is also an enemy of well-ordered human society, and must be dealt with accordingly. 1 ' There is no mistaking the fearful truth of the s ancient proverbs : ' An idle brain is the devil's work- shop', and that 'idle hands do mischief;' and hence the individual and the public good alike demand the uppression of idle ness. MAN AS AN ANIMAL. 35 1 ' All persons without honest employment and with- out known honest means of support are, in general, rightly deemed to be dangerous. And the now unhap- pily superabundant, but oft ineffectually employed, ways and means for their restraint, correction, or eradi- cation, if need be, should be rigorously exercised until such as a class cease to be. ' ' Moreover, the known reproduction of the incur- ably diseased, and of criminals of every kind, must be brought to an end. This can and should be done in behoof of the common weal. " No civilized people would, for a day even, tolerate the known raising and letting loose, upon the com- munity of multitudinous rattlesnakes, nor can they with impunity suffer the known multitudinous repro- duction of criminally vicious, low-grade human ani- mals of a still more dangerous brood than even 'rattlers' are ; nor can the day be far distant when healthy, wholesome, well-regulated, progressive, and really beneficent human society will longer tolerate the known multitudinous procreation of radically diseased, imbe- cile, or other naturally worthless and injurious low- grade human animals of any class or kind. Salus populi suprema est lex! Individual liberty and so-called parental rights must be circumscribed and bounded by the common weal. ' ' Moreover, a complete stop should forthwith be put to the really inhuman practice of England for genera- 36 YE THOROUGHBRED. tions, of dumping much of her idle, imbecile, pauper, and criminal population upon the shores of her colonies or other thinly populated countries; and hence of stern necessity, England (not now to speak of other nations) will at no very distant day have squarely to face an * Australian rabbit plague ' of human overpopulation, and that, too, chiefly of the lowest grade. "And as to the necessitously unemployed, humane, ness readily suggests a multitude of practically avail- able ways by which thousands upon thousands of such could be, and should be, suitably employed with untold benefit to themselves, with profitable pecuniary returns to individuals, corporations, or to the govern- ment, and with incalculable benefit to the whole country. " One obvious way of all but limitless good may be stated as follows: This and almost any other kingdom or state, has areas of great extent of ' swamp ' or other now unproductive or unutilized lands which not infrequently are pestiferous even, and the real causes of many of the epidemic diseases which scourge and decimate the land. The public welfare imperatively demands that these pest and plague blotches on the otherwise fair face of the earth be removed. 1 ' Thousands and tens of thousands of the honest unemployed everywhere could thus oftenjjbe given abundant work at good * living wages, ' in transforming such pestiferous or other now unproductive lands MAN AS AN ANIMAI,. 37 into the most fertile and fruitful portions of the whole country, and thus in health and wealth more than amply repay all the pounds, shillings, and pence expended thereon. Many of those thus employed would also in good part thereby become fitted to become, at home or abroad, tillers of the soil, an employment which should more and more be deemed to be among the best and noblest occupations of man. 1 ' Many other like advantageous and beneficial ways of honest remunerative employment of multitudes, often to a great extend in enforced idleness, will readily suggest themselves to the humanely thoughtful and well-minded. * ' Nor with us and others also is the choice volun- tary. The inevitable is, betterment of the individual, betterment of his material environments, betterment of society, and betterment of government —or chaotic anarchy. It is radical improvement or decay. ' ' A future Nigritian archaeologist, standing on the ruins of St. Paul's Cathedral, surveying the desolation of our great modern Babylon, is not a mere figment of the imagination, nor is the lesson to be derived there- from of local application only. Change but the ' terms ' of the ' fable, ' and the ' moral ' applies not only to us and ours, but to you and yours. Be it remembered, too, that very few even of the sites of the great * Babylonian ' cities of antiquity are now known, or much more than known, 38 Y3 THOROUGHBRED. "The great, the not infrequently vital problem of ' what shall be done ' for and with the multitudes of the unemployed almost everywhere, and with the now congested masses of humanity in all large cities, can and must be humanely and satisfactorily solved; and it is no day dream to predict that the generation of true men and women in the van of the fast approaching 20th Century will see the glorious work more than well begun. ' ' The magnetic pulsations of 'the good time coming' are now felt everywhere, and the humane and well- constituted are ' looking forward ' thereto with well- grounded, joyous anticipations.* " But, my dear Juvenis, amidst the grand lessons of these broad, pleasing, and certain generalizations, full, indeed, of the promise of gladsome human fruition, be it never forgotten that the foundation thoughts and principles sought to be set forth at our present inter- view, must at all times and under all circumstances ever be borne in mind and honestly carried out in every- day life; that the unchanged and unchangeable facts are that all real human improvement, and all true human progress must be based upon and accordant with the fixed laws and the slow and sure processes of beneficent nature; and that the real starting-point in the race of human improvement is with me; then with me and mine; and that inseparably connected with us and ours, are you and yours. And thus on, from the MAN AS AN ANIMAL. 39 center to the circumference of human relationship, never forgetting the all-important fact that the first and foremost all in all, of individual and aggregate humanity is involved in an honest answer to the ever- living question: which is The) rbal thoroughbred? And how it may come to pass that man of every species may become and continue to be bodily, electric- ally, instinctively, mentally, socially, morally, and Spiritually the most perfect and perfective ' after his kind?' » SECOND INTERVIEW. (41) To know thyself and to govern thyself accordingly is thS acme of human knowledge and duty. to) SECOND INTERVIEW. MAN AS A MAGNETIC BATTERY AND AN ELECTRO- TELEGRAPHIC MACHINE. 11 Yes, my dear Juvenis, it is a vitally important fact that man is a magnetic battery and an electro-tele- graphic machine, and that the same is true of other animals, ' after their kind.' " Such was the introductory statement of my good friend, the Senior, at an interview kindly granted by him shortly after that at which he gave expression to so many striking thoughts on ' ' human betterment, ' ' in reply to the unique query: "Which is the real thoroughbred? " "Yes," continued the Senior, "the brain is the great central battery, the ganglia are the relays or sub-centers, and the nerves are the 'wires.' 1 ' The battery is charged with the electricity set free by the chemical changes constantly going on in the living animal during the processes of digestion, res- piration, assimilation, decomposition, and the like, and also by absorption from exterior bodies, animate and inanimate. "And, my dear Juvenis, another all-important (43) 44 YK THOROUGHBRED. fundamental law of our animal being is that ' males * are ' positive, ' electrically, and ' females ' are ' nega- tive ;' and you need scarcely be reminded of the laws of electricity (both in animate and in inanimate bodies) that 'unlikes,' that is, 'positives' and 'negatives,' attract; and that 'likes,' that is, positives and posi- tives, and negatives and negatives, repel each other; and also that two bodies (or individuals) alike electric- ally, may be said to be ( neutral, ' that is, they neither attract nor repel each other. ' ' * * But, my dear Senior, may I inquire upon what known or demonstrable facts you base the somewhat startling statement that males are positive and females negative electrically?" "Assuredly, my dear Juvenis; and to make satis- factory reply to your pertinent query, you need but recall your own amusement in the school or lecture- room during the simplest experiments with the elec- trical machine. When standing upon an insulated stool, you noted with intense interest the electrical attractions and repulsions when the knuckle was presented to the pithball suspended from either end of the electrical machine, and that when this simple experiment was repeated by pupils of 'both sexes,' it would be ocularly shown beyond all peradventure that males are electrically positive and female negative; and thus, and in many other like ways, may be demon- strated the existence and operations of some of the MAN AS A MAGNETIC BATTERY. 45 most fundamental facts and factors in the organization and in the hourly and daily life of every human being. " It is, however, important to note that some females are relatively positive to some males, and vice versa. It is also an important collateral fact that the electrical condition of each individual varies greatly from time to time, as his conditions and surroundings differ, as may be shown by like experiments; and also that indi- viduals who are by nature positive electrically, may temporarily become, both by internal and external influences, extremely positive, and that those naturally negative may temporarily become extremely negative. * ' It is also, my dear Juvenis, demonstrably certain that the quantity of electricity existent within, and emanating from, each individual may vary greatly from hour to hour and from day to day, and that the quantity and activity coincide with the age, growth, development, and decay of the individual; and that they are also inseparably connected with, and depend- ent upon, the bodily make, sustenance, health, habits, material environments, and the like. "It is also a fundamental fact of infinite import to know and practically to appreciate, that the electricity of each individual male or female has a ' peculiar ' (that is, its 'own') quality springing from and depend- ent upon inheritance, nurture, mental, moral, and 1 spiritual ' pabulum, self-direction, reflection, compan- ionship, and social and other like surroundings; and 46 Yn THOROUGHBRED. hence it is that the electricity, or ' magnetism,' of one person, male or female, is physically, intellectually, and morally, healthy, pure, and elevating; and that which inheres in and emanates from another is, physically and otherwise, depravingly and degradingly unhealthy and impure, according as the individual is physically, instinctively, intellectually, morally, and otherwise, inherently good, bad, or indifferent. 1 ' Moreover, my dear Juvenis, it is an important cor- related fact ever to be borne in mind, that each indi- vidual is constantly surrounded by his own peculiar electrical atmosphere, whose activity, quantity, and quality are concordant in all things with the real char- acter and characteristics of the individual." ' ' My dear Senior, pray, intimate upon what known facts you base the important statement that every person is surrounded by an electrical atmosphere emanating from him? ' ' "Your important query, my dear Juvenis, is fully and satisfactorily answered by the simplest experiments with the electrometer, which, by being gradually brought near on every side, ocularly demonstrates not only the presence of electricity all around every 'body' in an active electrical state, but with a marked degree of certainty measures the quantity of free electricity at given distances from the body. And in this respect, as in most others, the analogy is perfect between animate and inanimate bodies of all kinds. MAN AS A MAGNETIC BATTKRY. 47 "Moreover, my dear Juvenis, it may in brief be truly affirmed without fear of intelligent contradiction, that electricity is the vital force, the motive power in man and in all other animals; and that the quantity, activity, and quality of the electricity generated within, and emanating from, every human being, are the 1 natural products ' of his organization and correspond with the sex and with the grade of the human animal, whether it be ill-bred, neutral, or thoroughbred; and hence, as are the status and character of the man or woman, so and such are his electrical influences and effects upon all others with whom he associates or with whom he may be en rapport. And such also, ' after their kind,' are the converse or reciprocal effects or influences of others upon himself. And it is, more- over, a fact of the greatest import that the electricity thus transmitted by one and absorbed by another is measurably retained by the recipient, and affects him for good or ill according to the quantity and quality of the electricity absorbed." " But, my dear Senior, how comes it to pass that these all-important facts, as you call them, have not hitherto been more generally known and utilized for individual good and for the common weal?" " Ah, my dear Juvenis, as well ask why the identity of lightning and electricity was not demonstrated until Franklin's day, and why that grand discovery with all its beneficent outcomes might not have been made for 48 YE THOROUGHBRED. another generation, perchance, but for the fortunate shower of rain (during his experiment) by which the string of the immortal kite, flown from Philadelphia Common, was changed from a dry non-conductor of electricity into a moist and good conductor; and hence, when, after repeated failures before the shower, he again, after the rainfall, brought his knuckle close to the iron doorkey tied near the lower end of the kite- string, sparks of Promethean fire from heaven were manifest ; and thus was made known one of the grandest discoveries of science. "Oh, yes, my dear Juvenis, the facts and laws of human electricity (and others like) have been well known and beneficently used by the enlightened few from the remotest antiquity. But it is only in our own age, as it were, and among some peoples only, that man, in general, has been ' permitted' to study nature, her facts and laws, and to make practical appli- cation thereof to man and to human affairs in everyday life ; and few know better than yourself how many emi- nent men have inhumanly suffered (and that, too, in the name of ' religion') because they dared to proclaim the important discoveries made by them in natural science. 1 ' But, my dear Juvenis, to return to our theme, ever bear in mind that the main facts of inanimate and animate electricity are identical ; that the laws of both are uniform ; and that the different names, not always MAN AS A MAGNETIC BATTERY. 4Q fittingly used in referring to such, but serve to desig- nate the seemingly different manifestations of the same electrical force, whether in the animate or inani- mate world. 1 ' Yes, truly, bear in mind and make intelligent application of these and other like fundamental facts and laws of animate and inanimate electricity, and you have the real clue to enable you to comprehend most of the momentous facts and affairs of everyday human life and experience, and to unravel and explain by natural facts and laws the so-called ' hidden mysteries' of mesmerism, animal magnetism, hypnotism, clairvoy- ance, second sight, prevision, mind reading, fortune tell- ing, witchcraft, spiritism, diabolism, et id genus mne, and thus aid to abolish and blot out many ignoble and enthralling human superstitions. " First, then, all interpersonal human attractions or repulsions are electrical (or, if the term be preferred, magnetic) whether between the same or opposite sexes; whether direct or reciprocal ; whether corporeal, in- stinctive, mental, moral, or what is called spiritual ; and whether in quality (or kind) healthful or unhealth- ful, pure or impure, elevating or depraving. ' ' Among the lower animals it is the one of the most powerful bodily make and the most positive, electric- ally, which leads the drove or flock, and challenged headship is generally determined by a fight to the 50 ire THOROUGHBRED. death ; amongst the lads in a neighborhood, or the boys at school, the same ultimate facts are ever and everywhere manifest ; among adult human beings of all fairly civilized grades it is those highly positive, electrically, who are the originating, guiding, control- ling, and final force among ' their fellows' ; all other ways and means being but collateral or concomitant. ' ' Among the coarsest and lowest grades of human animals, and among the highest and best-cultured thor- oughbreds, all the sexual and other like interpersonal influences are purely electrical ; all direct effects and reciprocal interchange of passion, motive, thought, pur- pose, and desire are electrical in their origin, transmis- sion, intercommunication and effects ; and they are all fundamentally identical with the known facts, laws, and effects of the same all-pervading electricity of the inanimate world, modified only in qualities, manifesta- tions, and effects because of its origin in living organ- isms, the degree of intelligence and the voluntary or involuntary will inherent therein guiding and control- ling its multifarious and important operations and manifestations. 1 * Proximity or contact are potent factors in the manifestations and effects of human electricity, but remoteness of polar electrical centers does not break the electrical connection of persons positively and negatively en rapport; although by transmission over MAN AS A MAGNETIC BATTERY. 5 1 great distances, varying degrees of loss by transmis- sion may, and often do, take place in like manner as in transmission by telegraph or telephone. "And further to particularize: No one, not even the most superficial observer can have failed to note the diametrical differences in different substances as media for the transmission of electricity and light. Copper, for instance, is an all but perfect conductor of elec- tricity, but it is a non-conductor of light. Glass, in thin plates, readily transmits light of every kind and quality, but it is a non-conductor of electricity, and so of a multitude of substances in contrast as above. "In general, it may be stated that all substances capable of absorbing and retaining moisture are, in a moist state, good conductors of electricity; but in a thoroughly dry state they are non-conductors. The human body, the living tree, the moist air, the damp earth and many other like substances are familiar instances of good conductors of electricity." While deeply interested in the enumeration of these specific facts and general principles, I begged my good friend, the Senior, to be pleased to point out other familiar manifestations and effects of the electrical force in everyday life. "With the greatest pleasure and satisfaction, my dear Juvenis, and the more so, because, methinks, your pertinent request intimates that you intelligently apprehend the supposed ' secret,' the real fons et origo 52 YE THOROUGHBRED. of not only all direct and reciprocal human influences, but of the great energizing force pervading all animate and inanimate being. 1 ' And to make your query in good part answer itself, Have you not this very day even had your attention arrested by the markedly different impressions produced upon you by your 'hand-shakes,' not only with your acquaintances, but especially with strangers to whom you were introduced ? Oh, yes, that of one was coarse, hard, and repellant; that of another was warm, vigorous, and impulsive; that of a third was flabby, lifeless, and chilling; and that of another was firm, nerveful, and gratefully thrilling; and so on, varying throughout the list. Thus in your varied ' hand- shakings ' was conveyed to you a direct electro- telegraphic communication of not uncertain import regarding the character and characteristics of your acquaintances. ' ' This conscious experience of the absorption of electricity emanating from another constitutes the ' sixth ' human ' sense,' which has been the subject of so much speculation, and which may fittingly be called the magnetic or ' electrical sense. ' ' ' Moreover, my dear Juvenis, all observant persons are cognizant of the peculiar electrical effects produced upon them by the presence of certain individuals, and of which they often afterwards make remarks to their friends and acquaintances. The impressions thus MAN AS A MAGNETIC BATTERY. 53 received may frequently vary from, or even may be in conflict with, the impressions received through the senses of sight and hearing, because the visage of one person may be comely to the eye, and the voice may be soft to the ear, and yet the electrical impression may be anything but agreeable ; in fact, it may be positively bad. And again, the face of another may lack in beauty, the form in symmetry, and the voice may be unmusical, and yet the presence of such an one may be a conscious benediction. 1 ' And further, my dear Juvenis, even the unseen approach of an individual may, and often does, electric- ally impress his friends or acquaintances in whose thoughts he had not before been for many a day, month, or year, and yet his appearance is welcomed with the exclamation : \ My dear A. B., I was just thinking of you !' and no wonder, for their electrical atmospheres had already commingled, and he had just received an electro -telegraphic message directly com- municated to him by the proximity of his friend (while yet unseen) ; and hence we have the scientific explan- ation of the old, old adage : ' ' Think of the deil and he appears,' or, as paraphrased by the polite : ' Think of the lord and he is near. ' And not only so, but you yourself (as also thousands of others) have not infre- quently experienced the fact that, having entered a room in total darkness, you have at once become con- 54 YE THOROUGHBRED scious of the unseen presence of some person therein into whose friendly or unfriendly electrical atmosphere you had come, as the facts quickly verified. "And while, assuredly, proximity or contact may be said to be an important element in the more obvious of human electrical effects and manifestations, yet it is equally true in animate and inanimate electricity, that distance, however remote, by earth or sea, only affects, proportionately, the electric connection and power of electro-telegraphic communication between persons electrically en rapport or in electrical affinity with each other, such as exists between the well-mated husband and wife, the mutually well-affectioned parent and child, the meetly affianced, or between a David and a Jonathan. ' ' Distance does not break the electrical connection between such positives and negatives even though facile electric communication may not infrequently be interrupted by the ill condition or abnormal disturb- ance of nature's unbroken media of the land, the water, and the circumfluent ether. ' ' The proofs of such and such like inter-electro- telegraphic communication between persons near and far remote abound everywhere. A multitude of intel- ligent witnesses can, if they would, testify thereto from their own personal experiences. The traditions of many families can make known the instantaneous receipt of such electrical brain messages from friends MAN AS A MAGNETIC BATTERY. 55 and other dear ones in distant lands even, conveying exact intelligence of transpiring events both sad and joyful; and such occurrences are often impressed upon the brain of the recipient, not merely as an ordinary telegraphic or telephonic message, but as an illuminated scenic picture or panoramic vision — a thing as yet only surmised by advanced electricians as being among the potentialities or possibilities of inanimate telephonic, telegraphic, or electro-teleoptical science. " In fact, my dear Juvenis, the world is full of proofs showing that persons in an abnormally negative electri- cal state, may and do constantly, and even indiscrimin- ately, receive such electrical impressions and commu- nications from the brains of those far and near who are in an abnormally positive electrical condition, and whose thoughts thus transmitted by them and received by others, may be their own or of themselves, their own notions or the notions or knowledge of others; and, strangely enough, such wholly mundane communica- tions are by many attributed to supra-mundane or infra-mundane sources." ' ' But, my dear Senior, are not your explanations of acknowledged facts at variance with those generally taught and believed regarding such and such like facts and experiences of everyday life ? ' ' ' ' Assuredly so, my dear Juvenis, except among the truly enlightened. The fact is that this old world of ours is but in part, and in some things only slowly, 56 YE THOROUGHBRED. emerging from its superstitious barbarism and from its childish ignorance of the simple fundamental facts and laws of animate and inanimate nature, and of their all-important application to themselves and others; and what is far worse even, and of which you need scarcely be reminded, there always have been and still are large classes of men professing better things, who fatten upon the ignorance, the superstitions, and the inborn and cultivated credulity of their fellow men; and, as a means to that end, they persistently decry all 1 knowledge ' except what is imparted by themselves, or which they see fit to have imparted to the multitudes still under their domination, and who, above all things, put forth every effort to withhold from the masses of mankind a scientific knowledge of the actual facts and laws of nature, and of universal nature within and around them, well knowing that by the spread of real light and true knowledge their ' occupation ' would soon be gone, and their ' rich perennial harvests ' pro- duced by human ignorance, superstition, and credulity would be ingathered by them nevermore. "But, my dear Juvenis, returning to our theme, a gentleman of your varied and extensive information needs not be reminded that ever and anon there are persons who, in total darkness and with their eyes shut, do read aloud from the pages of an open book ; or who in like manner will tell the correct time by an encased watch placed anywhere around their heads ; MAN AS A MAGNETIC BATTERY. 57 and who without the slightest previous knowledge or information on the part of himself or on the part of those immediately around them, will describe the fur- niture and the occupants of an adjoining room, be the partition wall ever so thick ; and thus set forth one of a multitude of like facts familiar to very many observ- ant and intelligent men and women; and of the indubit- able proofs of which manifestations it is wholly need- less to speak. 1 ' Now, satisfactorily and scientifically to explain the foregoing, it is but necessary to bear in mind some of the electrical facts and laws heretofore intimated ; and by comparison the more fully to understand the same, it will doubtless be well to refer to the exercise of the sense of sight. ' ' Height is the medium by which impressions of out- ward objects are conveyed through the admirable and well-adapted structure of the eye to the brain within, in the ordinary operations of ' seeing' what is external and within the natural range of vision, or when artifi- cially aided, as by the telescope, the microscope, or otherwise. 1 ' In total darkness and in the non-use of the eyes, as above noted, electricity is the medium by which impressions of extraneous objects are conveyed to the brain of the human or other animal. 1 ' Among the varied media through which light of any sort or kind passes with facility is a thin plate of 58 Y£ THOROUGHBRED. pure glass, which, by thus readily transmitting ordinary light, is said to be transparent ; and a multitude of other substances through which light does not thus pass with facility, or not at all, are said to be opaque or, as the case may be, semi-opaque (terms, by the way, which, like many others, are often used to cover up no small amount of human ignorance). " Now, it is well known that glass, as noted above, while it is a good conductor or transmitter of ordinary light, is a non-conductor or non-transmitter of electricity ; and on the other hand, earth, most metals, and all moist substances which are good con- ductors of electricity, are, in general, non-conductors of light ; and hence it is not the presence or the absence of light, but the electric state (whether positive or neg- ative) of the imparting and receiving bodies, and the conducting or non-conducting character of the medium of transmission, which determine the communication of impressions or other effects from outward objects to the brain within ; and hence, in the instances above cited (and in a multitude of others like), the direct communication of impressions of outward objects upon the brain is by direct electrical transmission through the skull — the partition wall, however thick — or through any other conductor of electricity ; and, there- fore, it is assuredly far more easy of explanation and comprehension than is that of seeing by the transmis- sion of light through the complicated machinery of the MAN AS A MAGNETIC BATTKRY. 59 eye and the optic nerve. In fact, my dear Juvenis, the ultimate brain impression received through ' seeing with the eyes' by the medium of light, is clearly the resultant effect of the electricity inherent in the light itself. ' ' And hence, that a person in a state of abnormal electrical receptivity should thus, in total darkness (that is, in the absence of light) , see clearly through solid and opaque substances (if good conductors of electricity) is not a so-called mystery, but it is the mani- fest result of the operation and effects of electrical facts and laws now becoming fairly well known and under- stood, more especially by experts in electrical science. " It is also clearly obvious that all such human elec- trical effects and manifestations must necessarily have markedly distinguishing characteristics because of their origin in living, sentient human organisms, and that these characteristics are bodily, instinctively, mentally, morally, and ' spiritually ' identical with the real character and characteristics (whether good, bad, or indifferent) of the individual or individuals in whom said electrical force is generated (or set free) and from whom it emanates. 1 ' Moreover, my dear Juvenis, it but needs to bear in mind these and analogous fundamental facts and oper- ations of human electricity very clearly to comprehend what, of late, has popularly become known as ' mind reading,' 6o ye Thoroughbred. ' ' This important and interesting manifestation pre- supposes contiguity and healthful concordant electrical conditions in the persons mutually concerned. Contact by hand even is not necessarily essential, although, in some instances, it measurably facilitates the electrical conveyance of the dominant brain impression from one individual to the other if in a condition of greater electrical receptivity, while if these conditions and mutual relationships are of insufficient electrical oppol sition, the experiment will wholly fail, or at least fal- short of complete success. Nor should it be forgotten that the general bodily health, the greater or less advanced stage of food digestion, the humidity and electrical condition of the atmosphere, the concordant or antagonistic condition of the on-lookers, and such like concurrent or cross-current circumstances and surroundings, are factors of especial import in all such human electro-telegraphy, just as in like manner, in everyday telegraphic operations, the chemical condi- tion of the battery, the working perfection of the machine, unbroken connections, the presence or absence of cross-currents, the state of the atmosphere, and such like, are essential conditions in the transmission of ordinary telegraphic messages. " Hence, my dear Juvenis, duly considering the many known identical facts and correspondencies between ordinary and vital telegraphy, the analogies are obviously all but complete even to the moderately MAN AS A MAGNETIC BATTERY. 6 1 informed or ordinarily observant, the differences or seeming divergencies being wholly attributable to the fact that the one is of inanimate origin and of mechan- ical operation, and the other is of animate evolvement and of operation and manifestation by and through the vital human mechanism ; but both alike are subjects of human research, knowledge, application, direction, control, and improved and improving evolvement and beneficent use. 1 ' Mind reading is, therefore, no occult mystery ; but it is simply one of the many known forms of inter- human telegraphy, the capacity for which is possessed in a greater or less degree by all human beings (and other animals), and, like other human capabilities, it is a matter of inheritance and is susceptible of develop- ment, culture, and utilization. 1 ' In fact, my dear Juvenis, it may be affirmed that those persons who become preeminently successful in dealing with their fellow men, are by inheritance and practice notable mind readers ; and of such it may truthfully be said that, in addition to their other marked capabilities, this faculty of reading the minds and char- acters of others is the master key of their success in life. Of such leaders of men it is often rightfully said that they ' see' people (even strangers to them) ' through and through' ; and hence chiefly comes their preeminent success. 1 ' And, my dear Juvenis, anticipating your obvious 62 Y# THOROUGHBRED. interrogation, I proceed to remark that, stript of all vulgar mystifying circumstances and accessories, the historic and still popular art of * fortune telling' is (when honest) nothing more than a form of ' mind reading' or interhuman electro- telegraphy, and of like simple scientific explanation and comprehension. ' ' The fortune teller needs but be of a temperament of unusual electrical receptivity, generally highly or extremely negative ; and hence the experts among such are mostly women who, as has been before inti- mated, are by nature electrically negative (ofttimes extremely so) to persons of the male sex. And when in a comatose or partially comatose state, they are markedly receptive of electrical brain impressions trans- mitted from persons of their own sex even, all of which, as I have heretofore said, is ocularly shown by the simplest electrical experiments, and it also becomes demonstrably clear to all intelligent observers of these and such like operations and manifestations of vital electricity and human electro-telegraphy. 1 ' It is also well known to the observant few, that many individuals, some men, but mostly women, are by inheritance (and ofttimes by culture) strongly predis- posed to a comatose (sleepy, lethargic, hypnotic) con- dition of the general bodily functions, and that this state or condition which so greatly facilitates the oper- ations of their cumulating electric brain force, may be produced from without by the mesmerist or hypnotist MAN AS A MAGNETIC BATTERY. 63 or it may be wholly self- induced by the (honest and capable) fortune teller (that is, mind reader) ; and no intelligent observer needs be told that this inherited capability (like all others) is susceptible of marked development by usage and culture. ' 'The fortune telling modus operandi "is generally about as follows: The person seeking to have his ' fortune ' told is ushered into the presence of the ' seer, ' pays the required fee, is seated near and generally in front of the ' teller, ' who (often with certain movements, not always intended for the mystification of the 'seeker') appears to look steadily into, say, a some- what large cylindrical piece of glass; or, with fixed look, stares at some ' point ' more or less remote, and in a short time the comatose or hypnotic state is induced in the seer, or teller; the electrical connection is now complete, the 'teller' and 'seeker' are en rapport, when, presto, the ' fortune teller ' (that is, the recipient of the brain impressions, or, if you will, the thoughts of the fortune seeker) proceeds to describe the elec- trical impressions thus conveyed to her brain from the brain of the seeker as they pass in panoramic view from the earliest impressions (or remembrances of the fortune seeker) to those of the present, and also of the future, but generally of those humanly known to the seeker (such as marriage by him, if then affianced, or of existing thoughts, wishes, purposes, and the like) , and all this, of course, to the utter amazement, if not the horror, of 64 YK THOROUGHBRED. the unsophisticated fortune seeker whom the ' seer ' had never met before, and of whom she did not have and could not have had any means of previous knowl- edge of any kind from others. ' ' Of the of ttimes absolute correctness of such pano- ramic ' revelations ' of personal history by so-called fortune-telling seers, there are and have been a multi- tude of unimpeachable witnesses (as is well known to not a few), and, indeed, there are many who can truth- fully aver that ' the seer told the story of my life far better than I could have told it myself; in fact, she really told me all that ever I did ! ' ' ' But as the spurious or forged necessarily presup- poses a genuine original, and since for personal gain the unscrupulous take the risks of making or passing the former for the latter, so likewise the world is full of spurious fortune tellers who possess none of the inherited or acquired capabilities of the genuine mind reader or of the hypnotic seer, and so they fatten on the credulity and ignorance of low-grade human beings of every class. " Moreover, there are conditions and circumstances (such as, for instance, during the active digestion of, perchance, an over- abundant meal) when even the genuine fortune-telling seer cannot self-induce the hypnotic state required in order to become perfectly en rapport (or in affinity), electrically, with the fortune seeker, but yet who, tempted by the fee, ' tells' of the MAN AS A MAGNETIC BATTERY. 65 unseen and unknown; and hence ' the victim' justly declares that the story thus told was mere guesswork, and very poor at that. ' "Thus it is obvious, my dear Juvenis, that this form of mind reading commonly called ' fortune telling ' is no metaphysical mystery, no so-called magic art, no supernatural manifestation, but that it is the natural outcome or resultant of unvarying natural laws govern- ing the electrical transmission or transference of im- pressions from the brain of one person to that of another; in short, it is mental c vision' (or ' seeing') by the medium of human electricity. 1 ' In fact, also, not only such mind reading as the foregoing, but also all intravision (or the mental inspection of one's own unfaded photographic brain impressions) and all intervision (or the mental inspec- tion of each other's brain impressions) are among the highest and best capabilities (by inheritance and by culture) of the noblest thoroughbreds of humankind; and to all such comes the felicity accruing from obedi- ence to the divine command, ' Know thyself, and know thy neighbor also ;' for among such fully devel- oped and truly enlightened men and women it is true, in a very large sense, that each may know others even as he himself is known by them. ' ' Moreover, my dear Juvenis, since there are ' causes' of all kinds constantly in active operation which will at a near or more remote period assuredly culminate in 66 YE THOROUGHBRED. certain corresponding ' events,' and as there are ' thoughts' being entertained and ' plans' being secretly formed for the accomplishment of some ' end' at an intended hour or day, it is, therefore, easy of compre- hension that a person of extreme electric receptivity may and, in fact, will of necessity become electrically en rapport with such exterior and focusing ' causes, ' and with such ' thoughts' and ' plans' existing in the brain of another individual near or remote, and, con- sequently, he will have what is called a ' presentiment' of what is about to take place ; or, if in a comatose state, he will describe such 'future event' whose sub- sequent occurrence will correspond with what is called the 'prediction' of the 'seer.' In this even, as you clearly perceive, there is no 'mystery.' " Becoming more and more astonished at the remark- able utterances of my friend, the Senior, I ventured to interrupt him by soliciting his views of the ' ' myste- ries" of "mesmerism," or, as it is now so frequently designated , ' ' hypnotism. ' ' " Your query, my dear Juvenis, is most pertinent, as this important subject belongs to the same category of numerous allied human electro-magnetic manifestations as those just referred to. "Successful mesmerism, so-called, presupposes the operator to be electrically of an extremely positive temperament (or constitution), and is generally of the male sex, and the ' subject ' to be mesmerized, to be MAN AS A MAGNETIC BATTERY. 67 extremely negative electrically, is generally of the female sex or a male of markedly feminine character- istics. The adroit operator readily selects from a mixed assembly a fitting negative subject, who, when duly posed on the dais, and after some facilitating manipu- lations, soon falls into an electrical coma, and shortly the hypnotic condition of the subject is complete. "The mesmerist, or hypnotist, has now absolute elec- trical control of his 'victim. ' His volitions become those of the hypnotized; as he wills so the ' victim ' wills, feels, thinks, speaks, and acts. What is good, may alone thus be willed, but the ' evil ' possibilities are appalling to contemplate ! If the hypnotist is healthy, pure, and well-cultured physically, instinctively, ment- ally, morally, and otherwise, and if his motives, ends, and aims are pure and rightful, the electrical effects produced upon the person hypnotized may, and often will, be correspondingly good and beneficent; but if the hypnotist be of an opposite character, then woe betide the polluted and ofttimes ruined victim ! Thus one of the best of human capabilities is often abused beyond measure; and hence why, in general, the prac- tice of the art of hypnotism should everywhere be put under the restraints of law, because skilled and expert practitioners can alone, in general, safely utilize it for good; and because, when used for evil purposes, it is the ' black art ' of human demons. ( ' It is important also to bear in mind that the hypno- 68 Y3 THOROUGHBRED tist can exert but lithe influence upon an individual of an equal or superior positive state electrically. Will- power, too, is a potent factor in resisting hypnotic influences, but a person having once been completely hypnotized may remain a facile victim to be enserfed by the same manipulator, or become more easily sub- ject to another. Individuals not having been com- pletely dehypnotized not infrequently remain in a semideranged state for a considerable time. When the 'mesmerist' is a coarse, low-grade, ill-bred human animal, the mesmerized ' may truthfully be said to have become ' demoniacally possessed. ' If, on the contrary, the mesmerist (or hypnotist) be a thorough- bred and well-cultured human being, the hypnotized will, in general, become possessed of a new force, healthful, uplifting, and beneficent. " Moreover, my dear Juvenis, in this category be- long the so-called art of 'witchcraft,' the 'evil eye,' and the like. 1 ' To be a so-called 'witch' but presupposes an indi- vidual, male or female, to be of a temperament abnor- mally electric ; and hence (bearing in mind and making due application of the simple fundamental facts and principles heretofore enunciated) all that pertains (or ever did, or can pertain) to so-called 'bewitching,' or the like, is of easy natural explanation and com- plete scientific comprehension. If this not uncommon abnormal inheritance of the electric force is specially MAN AS A MAGNETIC BATTERY. 69 manifested through the optic nerves (the sense of see- ing), it is called the 'evil eye'; if it is chiefly muscular, it is said to be of the powerful 'demon' ; and if con- centered in, and operating through, the fore and upper portions of the brain, its manifestations are called the vaticinations of the 'seer/ or of the 'prophet/ reveal- ing heavenly or infernal visions or communications ; and thus on, as might be enumerated to 'the end of the chapter'; and hence the all but endless number of manifestations attributed by the ignorant, superstitious multitude to extrahuman and extramundane influ- ences are naturally accounted for, since all such are in and of the individual themselves, of their own im- mediate surroundings ; or, it may be, that they are of their terrestrial and even stellar electrical environments, according as the individual by natural or acquired re- ceptivity or relationship may or may not be en rapport with the varied states and conditions of the surround- ing electric forces of animate and inanimate nature of every grade, sort, or quality, whether of human (or other animal), vegetable, or of inanimate matter near or far, immediate or remote. \ "Moreover, my dear Juvenis, you, doubtless, like many others, can readily recall instances, perchance not a few, of individuals of such an extremely abnor- mal electric state, positive or negative, that occasional surcharges of electricity transmitted tofand fro between them and surrounding material objects, have produced 70 Y3 THOROUGHBRED. startling effects quite analogous to the like manifesta- tions and effects of ordinary electrical discharges be- tween inanimate bodies in extremely opposite electrical states, and, in a small way, quite analogous to the greater effects produced by aerial and terrestrial electric discharges and disturbances. And, in passing, it may fittingly be remarked that the name 'witch' thus ap- plied to persons of such abnormal electrical condition, originally denoted an individual of ' peculiar knowl- edge,' but as the natural and scientific explanation of such manifestations was beyond the 'wit' or 'ken' of the superstitious teachers of the superstitious multi- tude, and since it furnished another potent means of putting and keeping the ignorant masses of mankind in mental and 'spiritual' serfdom, all such persons of abnormal electrical development were pronounced to be possessed of 'demons,' and in unnumbered instances were inhumanly put to death, to the everlasting shame and disgrace of humankind. And, in further illustra- tion of the cruel tyranny of the misuse of 'words' by designing men, this very term, 'demons,' originally denoting something 'divine,' blessed, and god-given, soon became tortured into a name for 'beings' or emana- tions from 'beings' said to be perpetually warring against everything 'divine' in man, and in the universe around him ; whereas all such manifestations are but the natural operations and outcomes of the attractions MAN AS A MAGNETIC BATTERY. 7 1 and repulsions of the forces existent in all things animate and inanimate. ' ' Being more and more amazed at these startling statements of my good friend, the Senior, I enquired whether he included what is commonly called ' ' spirit- ualism" and "clairvoyance" among the manifestations of the human electrical force. He replied: "Assuredly so, my dear Juvenis. All actual ' clairvoyants' are extremely negative electrically. The comatose state attendant thereon may be self- induced, and the susceptibility therefor is not in- frequently superinduced in persons (generally females) who are suffering from consumption or decline in one form or another. The electrically comatose state of the person really clairvoyant is simply an intensified form of that of the individual who, with the eyes shut, tells the hour by a watch, reads from a book, de- scribes the persons and furniture in another room, or correctly designates the location and appearance of objects more or less remote. 1 ' Doubtless, also, the clairvoyant often merely describes distant objects and persons from the im- pressions received by electrical communications from the brains of persons in close proximity. "In short, my dear Juvenis, as before intimated, the 'seeing' by clairvoyants, without the use of the eyes, through solid bodies which are good conductors of electricity is, as I have heretofore stated, even less 72 YE THOROUGHBRED. complicated, and is more easy of comprehension than is ordinary 'seeing with the eye' through a solid body such as thin glass which is a good conductor of solar or other light. 1 ' Moreover, it is well known to specialists on the varied operations and manifestations of human elec- tricity, ' that clairvoyant (clear-sighted) individuals, while in an electrically comatose state, self -induced or other, can and do readily receive impressions of things and events which at a near or remote period have been photographed, as it were, by nature on inanimate objects. The world is full of proof showing that such clairvoyants do see and describe the scenes, both good and ill, electrically photographed, for example, upon the walls of a room by previous occupants, and hence is the key to unlock, the clue to unravel most of the so-called mysteries of haunted houses, and the like ; and hence also is the real explanation of the un- numbered statements frequently being made by persons not markedly susceptible of receiving such electrical impressions, that while they are in such and such rooms an uncomfortable and uncanny feeling, often of fear or dread, becomes impressed upon them, and that in other rooms the very opposite is experienced by them. Nor could it be otherwise. In one case, on the bare walls of the room are hung, as it were, innumer- able human electric photographic pictures of past evil events, and in the other, those of the good. MAN AS A MAGNETIC BATTERY. 73 ' ' All such and a known multitude of kindred expe- riences of the most intelligent persons are not vain imaginings, but they are indisputable facts which, as has been shown, are founded in nature ; and, on the lines set forth, they are of ready comprehension and explanation. "The modus operandi of receiving such electrical photographic impressions of past events, from 'bits' of matter of any kind, is generally about as follows : Any person, say the husband of the clairvoyant, procures a small piece of any substance, such as cloth, wood, stone, or the like, which has been exposed to exterior animate electrical photographic influences or effects (produced by nature's chemical handiwork), and the subject places this bit of material upon her forehead (the article beforehand having been wrapped in a piece of thin cloth or paper when it is desired that the clair- voyant may not 'see' the substance), and in a short time, when the hypnotic state has been fully self -induced, the clairvoyant proceeds to describe the various impressions received by her ; and it is all but needless to add that these descriptions are often most interesting and instructive. They are frequently writ- ten down by an auditor (since perfectly hypnotic, clair- voyant, mediumistic, and other like visions are not impressed upon the 'brain' so as to become matters of 'memory' on the part of the 'seer' or medium), and not a few such notes have been put in print. Many 74 Y3 THOROUGHBRED. are unaware that some of the finest literary or scientific 'passages' (and treatises even) which they have ever heard or read, were originally clairvoyant utterances such as those mentioned above. 1 ' Perfected facility in self-inducing the clairvoyant state, and minute fulness and other excellencies of the descriptions, will generally accord with the natural* perceptive capacity and the mental culture of the clair- voyant. 1 ' Moreover, all real clairvoyants, when in a com- plete hypnotic state, are able to describe the appear- ance, and the like, of an absent individual by holding in the hand or placing on the forehead a lock of the hair or a bit of an article of clothing which had been worn by such absent person. ' ' Also, the marked natural development of the 1 electrical sense' (or receptivity, as above, of electrical impressions), as in 'bloodhounds,' is familiar to all, and whereby they will track, almost anywhere, a person whom they have known or a portion of whose clothing they have 'snielled,' as is said. Of course, the electric 'track-scent' will be 'lost' in the waters of rivers or of lakes which the fugitive may have swam across (or waded in), because the electricity of the swimmer or wader has necessarily become dispersed throughout the water. The dog, however, will regain the electrical scent impression made by the fugitive at any place where he may have again betaken himself to the land, MAN AS A MAGNETIC BATTERY. 75 ' ' Many other animals also, both feral and domestic, have this same 'electric sense' very highly developed, as is well known to many observant individuals. ' ' And whatever superficial thinkers and observers may say to the contrary, vegetables even (not now to speak of like facts concerning things inanimate) are more or less capable of receiving (and imparting) electrical impressions or influences from the individuals who tend them. The very presence amongst them of a loving caretaker is to them a ' benediction.' "In short, my dear Juvenis, it is not the presence and influence of imaginary and Utopian ' hobgoblins ' which are to be feared in this world of ours, but it is the presence and influence of low-grade human animals whose vileness, electrically and otherwise, vitiates the whole atmosphere and infuses itself into all persons and things about and around them. Vile man himself is his own demon of darkness and evil. The real thoroughbred human animal is an angel of light and life. "You also, my dear Juvenis, very pertinently and anxiously enquire concerning what is now so generally known in our modern western world as ' spiritualism, * which, by the way, is but a newly assumed 'name' for one of the most ancient, most widespread, and most unhappy ' delusions ' which has ever enserfed humankind. In its very name it postulates an ' un- known force' (spirit) to interpret and explain the 76 ¥3 THOROUGHBRED. operations and manifestations of a well-known ' force,' namely, animate and inanimate ' electricity,' and thus wholly reverses the common sense and scientific method of investigation by ' assuming ' an unknown ' cause ' instead of beginni ag with what is, or may be, ' well known' and proceeding therefrom, outward and on- ward, identifying, comprehending, and elucidating what has ignorantly and superstitiously been ' assumed ' of the really ' unknown.' "Oh, ignorant and unhappy man! In the long, dark and dreary past, and even in the doleful and mis- guided present, he ever has been, and still is, seeking for unknown, unknowable, and non-existent 'causes' in his futile attempts to comprehend and explain what is of and within himself and all around him in outward nature, and all whose operations and manifestations are in perfect accordance with the fixed facts and unvarying laws of nature, and which, in general, are or may become of ready comprehension and beneficent uti- lization by the 'ken and can' of him who 'alphabetically' reads aright 'the book' of his own animal being, and of the animate and inanimate world around him ; and who, from the same facts and laws, may clearly per- ceive by analogy the necessary continuance of the operations and applications thereof far on beyond his own finite 'ken' into humanly incomprehensible infin- itude. MAN AS A MAGNETIC BATTKRY. 77 "But to return, in detail, to your query regarding 1 spirit ' manifestations, revelations, and the like. "The 'A. B. C of spiritist operations is substan- tially as follows: A group of individuals, male and female (often extremely positive and negative elec- trically, and generally of those constitutionally and by habit predisposed to make or receive electrical impres- sions), seat themselves alternately and in proximity around a small wooden table. They place the palms of their hands on its top, the ends of their thumbs in touch, the little fingers of their right and left hands in touch with those of the contiguous sitters at their right and left, and so ©n of the group of alternate males and females wholly around the tabletop (making a com- plete circle of thumbs and little fingers in touch, all resting upon the table), and thus they really form what is known in elementary electrical science as the 'voltaic battery,' and by which, as is well known, a continuous current of electricity is generated. ' ' This group of persons thus sit for a considerable period in solemn silence, with minds intent, while the human electric current is generated, and the electricity spreads in cumulating quantity over the surface of the tabletop, where it remains generally for a very con- siderable time, since the 'dry' wooden legs of the table, being poor conductors of electricity, do not readily convey it to the floor of the room from whence, by the walls of the building, it would with facility be 78 Y3 THOROUGHBRED. conducted to the 'earth,' the great reservoir of mun- dane electricity. ' ' These unwise experimenters having each imparted a very considerable portion of their own Vital electri- cal force' to the inanimate tabletop, which, from the overflow of the human voltaic- electrical battery around and upon it, becomes more or less highly charged with the commingled 'human electricity' of the unwise group of individuals, and the preparations for the so-called 'spirit' manifestations are complete. "Now, it is to be borne in mind that the 'quality' of the commingled human electricity with which this poor little inanimate table is thus surcharged, is precisely that of the combined character or quality of the elec- tricity of the experimenters physically, instinctively, mentally, and morally, whether such be good, bad, or indifferent. "All things are now ready for the 'spirit;' that is, the 'human electrical' manifestations. "It may here be remarked, however, that what might to some appear to be a very rude 'spiritual' happening, occasionally takes place just at this point somewhat as follows : Should it so be that the com- mingled electricity with which the table has thus been 'charged' is, say, highly positive, and one of the sitters be in an extremely negative condition, and should s uch an one be the last to rise from the table, and if, per- chance, he be a new experimenter, his agitated affright MAN AS A MAGNETIC BATTERY. 79 can easily be imagined when the mutual electrical at- tractions of the 'positive' table and the 'negative' ex- perimenter cause the table to tip over upon and adhere to the affrighted subject ; and it will so remain until their electrical conditions are equalized, when attrac- tion will cease. "It will be readily understood that such 'spirit' rude- ness will sometimes disperse a gathering of amateur ex- perimenters. "Bear in mind also, that it is necessarily an indis- pensable condition of the complete success of the elec- trical experiments (the so-called 'spirit' manifestations) about to take place, that there be no 'on-looker' present who is of an extremely positive temperament electri- cally, and who is determined so to 'will' that he may counteract or nullify the operations of the 'spirits,' because it is necessarily certain that a sufficiently powerful electrical cross-current emanating from such an one in a small assembly, and from several such per- sons in a larger gathering, will (although solemn silence be maintained) effectively interrupt or wholly prevent the 'spirit' (that is, the electrical) manifesta- tions at the 'seance.' ' ' In the absence of such electric 'cross-currents, ' it is also to be borne in mind that the 'spiritists' are by temperament and by their surroundings in an electrical condition highly favorable to the giving or receiving electrical brain impressions ; that they are in electrical 80 YE THOROUGHBRED. affinity generally with each other of the immediate group or 'circle' of experimenters ; that they are also necessarily en rapport electrically with other persons who are absent (their electrical 'affinity' with whom, as I have before pointed out, not being materially affected by distance) and from whom communications may even the more readily be received because of their increased electrical receptivity induced by the experi- ments and surroundings of the seance. ' 'Remember, too, that the table accumulated electricity forms a center of mutual electrical relationship between the individual experimenters, and that the very at- mosphere of the room has become fully charged with the same vital force radiating from the tabletop ac- cumulation until the diffusion thereof from the table is complete, when all 'spirit' manifestations will cease and the seance come to its close. " Moreover, the audible rappings produced by the impingement upon the table, by transmission of human electricity, has its corresponding counterpart in the \mplest experiments in ordinary frictional or dynamic electricity, whether as in the spark seen or sound heard; or even in the clicking of the telegraphic instrument, and the like, bating the peculiarities coincident upon its quality, characteristics, and operations as human and vital (and not ordinary or inanimate) electricity ; and because of its origin in the lower or higher grade of human animals. The 'communications' or 'revela- MAN AS A MAGNETIC BATTKRY. 8 1 tions' made in various ways, coming as they all do from the brains of living persons absent or present, are the more peculiar and the more markedly distinct, according as they are the outcomes of abnormal inherit- ances, or of unusual developments of some one por- tion of the human brain, whether intellectual, imagina- tive, reverential, social, or of the animal propensities. Also, proofs abound showing that many of the 'spirit' communications received at seances are only 'tele- graphic messages' transmitted from the brain of an ab- sent individual who is known to be electrically en rapport with a person in the 'circle, ' even with the principal 'medium' at the seance ; and subsequent mutual explanations have frequently shown that the thoughts 'revealed' by the 'medium' were identically those in the mind of the absent individual at the very time the 'revelation' of them was made at the distant seance of 'spiritualists.' In the same manner also, a knowledge of, or an acquaintance with, the opinions or writings of a deceased individual is electrically received from the brain of a person present at, or absent from, the seance, and a 'revelation' thereof is made by the medium, and 'the credulous' ones 'assume' that it came from 'the spirit' of a person long deceased, whereas it has often been demonstrated that the 'knowledge' concerning the deceased (which was said to have come from 'the spirit world') , in fact, came from the brain of a person in the 'circle,' it having been afterwards shown that 82 YE THOROUGHBRED. the statements of the medium were a literal reproduc- tion both of the correct and the incorrect impressions of said present individual concerning the deceased, and hence no 'sane' person could possibly doubt whence said ' revelation' came. In short, my dear Juvenis, such and such like averments as the foregoing may be made of all so-called ' spiritual revelations. ' "Moreover, the mediumistic 'pencil writing' by direct 'electrical' dictation, emanating from the 'brain' of an individual far or near, is in reality but a counter- part of like writing by a pen or typewriter from ordinary audible, oral, telegraphic, or telephonic dicta- tion, the former being a direct electrical communication from brain to brain, and the latter also of electrical brain origin, being conveyed through the plural instru- mentalities of wire, and ear, and voice; or, in literal transcription, through the eye. "Nor is the 'floating table' manifestation at such 'human electrical' seances, either as to the facts or the manifestations, other than counterparts of the 'iron wire' or small 'bolt' suspended in the center of an ordinary electrical 'helix,' and which is held in the center of the 'helix' without 'contact' by the surround- ing equalized electrical attraction and repulsion, and which, by what 'is called' the 'attraction of gravita- tion' (and which, in 'essence,' is 'electrical'), will descend if the electrical current through the wire forming the helix be 'broken/ but will cease to move MAN AS A MAGNETIC BATTERY. 83 the moment the electrical current is 'restored.' The bottom 'fact* in each of these 'manifestations' is identical, namely, a heavy body suspended (or moving) in 'midair' without being in 'contact' with any other heavy body. " In short, my dear Juvenis, the 'spirit' which pro- duces all the sentient, visible, audible, or tangible manifestations at all honest 'spiritualistic' seances, is the 'spirit' of human and other 'electricity;' and all the so-called 'spirit' mediumistic 'revelations' are but the 'writing down' or the vocal utterance of the elec- trical brain impressions of some person (or persons) present or absent with whom the medium is en rapport by electrical affinity and human electrical communica- tion. " And, as I before intimated, the 'revelation' deemed (assumed) to be from what is called a 'disembodied spirit,' is but an 'electrical' communication or 'mes- sage' to the 'medium' from the 'brain' of another living person of the impressions or knowledge of said living person concerning some deceased individual with whom he had been acquainted or of whom he had heard or read; and, moreover, if the living person from whose brain is transmitted the 'story of the departed' is of defective natural ability or education, the 'story' thus 'revealed' will necessarily often be of such a character, grammatically and otherwise, as greatly to 84 YE THOROUGHBRED. discredit the oft well-known Earthly' ability and culture of 'the deceased' from whose 'spirit' the 'story* or 'revelation' is said to come. ' ' In like manner also, all the personally 'unacquired' skill, knowledge, or ability of any kind (such as playing upon a musical instrument) which is frequently manifested by an honest, uneducated electrical 'medium' in a state of perfect hypnotic trance, is but the electrically transmitted skill, knowledge, or ability of some living person present or absent with whom the 'medium' is, for the time being, in human electro- telegraphic communication, and whose skill, knowledge, or capability of any kind is transmitted from such living persons through the 'medium' instead of through a telephone, a phonograph, or by other electrical 'wire communication.' Only this, and nothing more. ' ' Moreover, if the source of these electrically trans- mitted impressions is in the brain of a low-grade, de- ceitful, and lieing human animal, the spiritists aver that a lieing disembodied 'spirit' controls and deceives the 'medium;' and so also, on the contrary, if the source of the 'revelation' is in the brain of a living 'thoroughbred' human being, the spiritists as absurdly aver that a 'good' disembodied 'spirit' from an alien world controls and 'speaks' through the 'medium;' and also when the mundane human electrical communica- tion, from any ordinary cause, comes to a close, the s piritists aver that the 'spirit' has taken its departure MAN AS A MAGNETIC BATTERY. 85 to its alien ultramundane abode, and thus on it is through the whole category of 'assumptions' regarding what they call 'spirit revelations.' " And, my dear Juvenis, if it be deemed necessary in order to put the human and mundane 'source' of each and every of all such mediumistic and so-called infra or supramundane 'spirit' communications beyond all sane possible doubt or peradventure, let, for ex- ample, two individuals of strong will and of highly 'positive' electrical temperaments, and who, for ins- tance, are 'high priests' of such diametrically an- tagonistic 'religious beliefs' as 'Calvinism' and 'Uni- versalism,' appear in succession in the presence of the same (honest) 'medium,' and each of these enquirers, so 'willing' it, will receive, in reply to identical ques- tions concerning 'futurity,' answers which perfectly correspond with their own respective 'religious beliefs, ' that is, their own 'brain impressions' electrically con- veyed to the 'brain' of the medium will be returned to each enquirer as a 'revelation' from the 'spirit' con- trolling and speaking through the 'medium.' " This latter statement, as will be observed, is literally, amusingly, and instructively true, because the actual 'spirit' in each and every such like instance is the 'questioner' himself who electrically controls the 'medium,' and in reality 'dictates' the so-called 'spirit' answers to his own questions. " This unfailing test of the actual 'human' origin of 86 YE THOROUGHBRED. all such so-styled spirit 'revelations' may be verified, as above, in trie case of any and every bona fide and really entranced 'medium' in the wide world, all averments of 'spiritualists' and others to the contrary notwithstand- ing. "And, my dear Juvenis, not to overweary you with the all but innumerable details of ' spiritist ' visions, vaticinations, ghost appearances, and all such like, it will, to a person of your intelligence, suffice further to remark that they are often the 'brain im- pressions' of the individuals themselves (that is, they are what are frequently called 'subjective impressions,' or those of a person's own brain, and hence wholly within himself), or they may be 'objective' or outside the individual, and often are but the 'electrical photo- graphs' which, as I have before intimated, have been impressed upon the outward inorganic world, and which are not infrequently 'seen' by human and other animals, and more especially by those whose natural electrical receptivity is very great, or by persons in a hypnotic or semihypnotic state. ' ' And as to the reputed ' apparitions ' of ' human form,' testified to as having been 'seen' by two or more unsuborned witnesses, they, if real, appear to be of but two principal classes, namely, they may be the ' electrical bodies ' (of living persons) temporarily departing from or returning into their ' grosser material bodies, ' say, as in the case of ' adepts ' of perfected MAN AS A MAGNETIC EATTERY. 87 knowledge of their own wondrous inherent capabilities, and of perfected skill in controlling and directing their highest innate and fully developed electrical and other like material powers and functions of their own bodies and being, from the lowest to the highest and most divine and God-like. " That some 'adepts' (as also others calling them- selves ' spiritualists ' ) claim to have and occasionally do exercise such inherent and acquired power over their 'inner electrical self or selves,' appears to be well authenticated; but, at the same time, it is affirmed by these 'adepts' that such is done by them wholly by knowing and utilizing their own 'natural' powers and capacities, and not by the aid or influence of any so- called disembodied or other 'spirits.' "Or, on the other hand, some of these 'apparitions' may be relegated to visible manifestations of the 'elec- trical body'— the 'electrical inner self — of a human being, which is necessarily a perfect counterpart in form of the outward and 'grosser material body,' and which (like as 'balls of electric light' ) may of necessity become temporarily 'visible,' as above; or upon the sudden cessation of the still healthy functions of the 'gross material body, ' as in the case of sudden death by accident, or in some kinds of sickness by slow bodily decay, during which it is well known an abnormal quantity of bodily electricity is set free; and when such sickness becomes fatal, many seemingly sane and 88 YH THOROUGHBRED. reputedly truthful persons aver that they have 'seen* an electrical or ethereal 'body' pass out of the dead gross material body. ' 'In such and analogous cases, the 'inner electric self thus suddenly or otherwise dissevered and set free from the gross material body, may and does in some in- stances become 'visible,' and for a brief time remains visible in the vicinity of its late grosser counterpart ; and the separated and less gross 'electric body,' having by itself but little inherent 'electrical cohesion,' is speedily disintegrated and diffused into the vast sur- rounding reservoir of mundane and supernal electricity. And thus the grosser material body commingles with its mother earth, and the less gross electrical body re- commingles more or less speedily with the all-pervad- ing electric force of the universe. "Of the 'invisible, immortal soul' or spirit, believed by many to exist in every human being, the elucida- tion of my present theme does not require me to speak. " And now, my dear Juvenis, the hour is late, and I will bring this, perchance, too protracted interview to a close by somewhat briefly replying more in detail to your important query concerning the operations and manifestations of the 'human electrical force' in the ordinary intercourse of individuals, and in the common affairs of everyday life. "And foremost, because it is generally called 'the greatest thing on earth, ' I remark that 'human love' MAN AS A MAGNETIC BATTERY. 89 in all its peculiar manifestations is but 'human electrical attraction,' whether its manifestations are between the merely physically strong and the weak ; whether be- tween the basal backbrains whose special functions are those of the amatory animal passions ; whether of those portions of the brain whose functions are social ; or whether in ascending gradation they are mental, aesthetic, reverential, ratiocinative, or of all combined. "If the animal 'brain' is largely, say, abnormally, developed, as is the case in most low-grade human and other animals 'after their kind,' its sexual amatory manifestations are of a sort closely allied to those of the salacious brute ; and if such persons, electrically, are abnormally 'positive,' vile, and vitiated in character and quality, they are the pestilential despoilers of individual and social peace and purity. " If, on the other hand, mutual human electrical at- traction is the result and outcome of well-balanced, well-bred, and well-mated brains and other physical qualities, then and then only does it become a 'bond* cf mutual good, of joy, of peace, and of true human happiness, to be preserved and strengthened by due re- straint and conservation, guided by an intelligent un- derstanding of, and obedience to, the unvarying facts and laws of our physical constitutions, and especially of our human electrical relations and capabilities. ' ' Moreover, if the electrical affinities and the mu- tual intermingling of the 'brain impressions' of in- 90 Y3 THOROUGHBRED. dividuals be even in a closely approximate degree those of mere intellectuality, then mutual electrical affinity or attraction is commonly known as 'platonic love. ' ' 'And thus it is on through the multitudinous and multifarious category of human likes and affections. They all are but the varied manifestations of sexual and other human electrical attractions resultant from bodily and other inheritances, and from the make, the status, and the culture of the individual. "On the contrary, too, all human aversions, dis- likes, personal antipathies, and hates, are in their ul- timate analysis but the manifestations of human ' elec- trical repulsions,* and hence also of human origin, cognizance, and control. ' ' Thus also it is of all like manifestations of myriad sorts among the lower animals, 'after their kind/ and between them and man; and not only in their anal- ogies, but also in their fundamental identity they are the same, namely, 'animal electrical attractions or repulsions. ' ' ' The existence of analogous facts, and the oper- ation of the same electrical laws, are in innumerable ways manifest also in the vegetable (and inanimate) world, but to which this passing reference alone can now be made. ' ' In the ordinary business and general intercourse of men, the individual of potent influence is he who is MAN AS A MAGNETIC BATTERY. 9 1 electrically 'positive;' and such an one, in common parlance, is spoken of as being 'magnetic.' He at- tracts others; he leads; he controls. " Take, for example, the public speaker. The effect produced upon his hearers by his discourse — other things being in accord — will, in general, be measured by the quantity, activity, and quality of his radiating electrical force. " The words uttered by each of several speakers may, for example, be identically the same both as to the words themselves and the grammatical construction of the sentences, and thus the same thoughts may be orally expressed; but the electrical impressions made upon the brains of the auditors will be radically dif- ferent, according as the electrical emanations of the speakers are those of ill-bred or thoroughbred human animals. Mere mental culture, feigned voice, deceit- ful cunning, and sanctimonious mien may temporarily deceive the eyes and ears of beglamored 'negative elec- trical receptives' in an assembly, but no dissimulation in voice or mien, no tricky tropes or rhetorical leger- demain, will materially change the actual electric brain impressions produced, whether good, bad, or indif- ferent, according as are the real character and elec- trical characteristics of the speaker. " The electrical 'positives' (men and women) in an assembly may and often do resist and repel the evil electrical brain impressions transmitted from a speaker; 92 Y3 THOROUGHBRED. but the opposite is generally the case with those in an audience who are extremely negative or receptive. The latter are generally females, or males of peculiarly feminine characteristics, and hence among these are the most numerous facile victims of fads, furores, and delusions of every sort and kind. " Of what I have just stated, every intelligent indi- vidual can for himself make innumerable all-important practical applications in all the relations of everyday life, and should govern himself accordingly, everbearing in mind the unchanging truth embodied in the too oft unheeded apothegm, 'Kvil communications (oral and all other) corrupt good manners' (morals, wills, and characters). * ' Nor, my dear Juvenis, can such human electrical manifestations be overlooked as not infrequently result from two or three congenial individuals as- sembling, say, in an upper room (wherein, as has been intimated, the electrical conditions are more favorable than on the generally more moist ground floor), when with thoughts mutually preintent, say, upon what is humanly good and uplifting, their mutually beneficent electrical atmospheres freely inter- commingling, their theme of intellectual discourse being of an ennobling scope, their emotional exercises, say, of a devotional and reverential kind, the resultant effects upon themselves (and, perchance, upon some absent ones upon whom their concordant electric in- MAN AS A MAGNETIC BATTERY. 93 fluences are with united purpose concentrated) will, in general, be correspondingly good and beneficent. * ' On the contrary, also, of a like assembly of low- grade persons of base and vile intent (with mutual purpose and design to conspire for ill against absent ones upon whom all their evil thoughts and intents are concentered), the resultant effects not only upon them- selves but also by electrical transmission, will, in gen- eral, be of corresponding ill to him (or them) upon whom their combined electrical force is concentered, and in whose brain will not infrequently be engendered a dread of impending evil; and which, by intensified continuance and repetition, may and often does produce * mental unhingement ' in a brain unhappily of insuffi- cient resistance or positive and repellant electric force to withstand and turn aside such transmitted ' electric brain waves' of ill-intent thus concentered upon himself. " This latter is the work of human demons of dark- ness; the former is that of human angels of light and beneficence. " Consider, too, the unnumbered applications of all these and other like human electrical facts in their multifarious manifestations among and upon large assemblages of the high-grade and the well-bred, of the motley crowd, and of the all but unredemptively degraded of human beings, and the objects, ends, and 94 YE THOROUGHBRED. aims for which they may have congregated, and the most superficial observer can but see that it is the 1 human electric force ' which dominates men individu- ally and in the mass, whether for good or ill and whether for uplifting or degrading. * ' To know the real source of human good or ill is to find and apply the true means to promote the one or remove the other; and when man comes to know that the real cause of both is not extraneous but is within himself, he will clearly see that the ' alpha ' of all real human improvement is in human ' bodily regen- eration, ' in the * breeding and training of true thor- oughbred human animals, ' and the ultimate extirpa- tion of low-grades. " Moreover, my dear Juvenis, bearing in mind that 1 distance ' is really not a ' limiting unit ' nor a ' domi- nating factor' in measuring the etheric and atmos- pheric spread and effect of all such and such like electrical 'brain- wave' impressions, it becomes easy scientifically to understand the simultaneous existence and manifestations of identical thoughts, fancies, fads, delusions, and epidemics of hate, crime, and the like, as also of social, political, and other like excitements and commotions for good or ill, not only in the near but in the remote parts of the hemisphere and of the whole world at one and the same time; nor do the ordinary * medicos ' appear as yet to realize the great MAN AS A MAGNETIC BATTERY 95 part played by the electrical diffusion of virulent mental, moral, and physical disorders, and diseases of every sort and kind. 1 ' Hence also is the real source and explanation of the marked electrical effects upon human and all other living organisms, of immediate material environments of every kind, of altitude and latitude, of the presence or absence of light and heat, of local or more general atmospheric conditions (and of some of which the 'rheumatics' are 'barometers'), of seismic disturbances, and of solar, lunar, and planetary electrical effects upon the earth and upon all thereon, animate and inanimate. ' ' And hence, too (based upon the grand electrical and other like concordant effects produced upon our solar system by the greater planetary and stellar 1 conjunctions ' closing an old and ushering in a new siderial cycle) , the sages and seers of the olden time foretold the coming upon earth of a new 'Avatar, ' and the beginning of a new ' aeon ' of health, peace, plenty, prosperity, and good will among men; and with well- grounded hope it is believed that the now fast approaching ' 20th Century ' will inaugurate a more glorious era than this old world of ours has ever known hitherto. . " And, my dear Juvenis, let me add that the time is now in which to dispel and forever banish the ignoble and enserfing superstition which teaches that these all- 96 Y£ THOROUGHBRED. pervading and ever present human electrical influences and effects emanating from ourselves and from those around us, are produced by good or evil alien beings from some imaginary places of abode, and whose bene- ficent influences can be secured, or whose maleficent influences can be averted, by individuals who profess to have an intimate acquaintance with such, and who (generally for a ' consideration ') promise to secure for their patrons the l good offices ' of the one class of alien ' spirits ' or drive away the other. 1 1 Yes, truly, my dear Juvenis, all things portend that the long, dark and dreary night of human ignor- ance, superstition and oppression is about to end ; and the glorious day of true knowledge and of manly and womanly obedience to the laws of nature and of na- ture's God is about to dawn, when high-grade men and women of regenerated species and thoroughbred culture will more and more fill the earth, and dwell together in fraternal peace, prosperity, and happiness; when the true gospel of humanity will be preached to every creature ; when the only true faith of the fatherhood and motherhood of God, and the brother- hood and sisterhood of man and woman, will every- where beneficently prevail; and when the age will have come of which Scotia's immortal bard divinely sang : " ' It's comin' yet for a' that, — When man to man, the world o'er, Shall brothers be for a' that ! '" THIRD INTERVIEW. (97) The "American," the British-Canadian, the Franco-Canadian, and other varieties of the Caucasian species of the genus homo in North America. The notable national position of the United States. The possibility and the practical beneficent outcomes of a firm alliance of amity between the British Empire and * the Great Republic." (98) THIRD INTERVIEW. MAN AMERICANIZED. THE GREAT REPUBLIC ; ITS STATUS, DANGERS, DUTIES, AND ITS FUTURE. 1 ' Yes, my dear Juvenis, it is certainly true that among the most potent factors differentiating indi- viduals and peoples, are the mineral and geological character and characteristics of their habitats, or of the localities wherein they may have become dispersed. ' 'The markedly distinguishing differences in varieties of the same or different species even, are generally at- tributed to climate, vegetable or animal diet, social habits, education, and the like, all of which assuredly have their important place and effect, but how seldom are considered the more fundamentally important facts and effects arising from the composition and quality of the soil. " Oh, yes, the ancients were literally correct in designating the human animal as homo, humus, made of 'earth.' " In fact, unless soil qualities and other geological characteristics are taken into account, it be comes wholly impossible satisfactorily to explain the many (99) IOO Y£ THOROUGHBRED. and great tribal and national varieties, say, of the Caucasian (Aryan) race now spread over the whole of Europe, much of America, and numerous other por- tions of the earth; nor otherwise can be clearly under- stood the specially distinguishing physical and other differences of the various peoples of Central and North- western Europe and their descendants throughout the world. "To particularize somewhat: The stalwart Celtic Scot is chiefly indebted for his massive bony fabric to the abundanf limestone in the greater part of the soil, and in the rocky substratum of his native heath. "Ivime, in one form or another, is the principal substance composing 'bone;' and where limerock abounds, the soil, the water, and the vegetation are surcharged with lime, and hence comes the abundant supply of ' bone food ' for man and beast; and thus the massive bone fabric of the Highland man has been nourished, upbuilt, and maintained through long con- tinuous generations. ' ' If, on the other hand, the earth supply of ' lime ' is deficient, the bone structure of the human animal suffers from lessening nourishment; and hence a dimin- ishing size and strength of bone in man (and in the other animals) will be the result, and in process of time will lead to the collapse and even to the extinction of the race from bone-food starvation. MAN AMKRICANIZKD. IOI " And hence, not without foundation in nature was the myth of Deucalion and Pyrrha, that to repeople the earth, the stones (the bones of the earth) became men and women, — durum genus — a hardy race. So, too, the 'vim,' the energy, the 'blooming' health of individuals is largely due to a sufficiency of 1 iron food. ' Iron is all-essential to vigorous animal vitality. Wherever iron abounds in the earth, man procures a sufficiency from the water he drinks and the food he eats. 1 ' Iron is a vital constituent of healthy blood. It attracts and extracts from the air in the lungs the life-supporting element of oxygen which transforms the brown-red venous blood into the revivified florid- red arterial blood, which, carried to every part of the body, nourishes and reanimates every tissue, and paints the cheek with that rose-red bloom which is so peculiarly characteristic of those persons and peoples whose native soil is abundantly supplied with the all- essential life and health element of iron. "The saying that 'he is a man of iron' is not a mere figure of speech. It is very often literally and happily true. ' ' Hence also, on the contrary, why it generally is that the countenances of many individuals whose supply of iron food is deficient are pale and wan, and their bodies lack stamina, force, and endurance; and 102 YE THOROUGH BRED. hence, therefore, it is that wise 'medicos' in their practice act upon the important fact that multitudes of their patients are decaying simply from want of a sufficiency of 'iron food.' " For instance, also, contrast the generally ruddy, healthful countenances of the inhabitants of the British Isles, whose soils are surcharged with iron, with the countenances of those of their brothers and sisters who have emigrated to a country whose soil is almost des- titute of this essential life-supporting element, and in a brief term of years pallidity of countenance and di- minished physical vigor will be painfully manifest amongst those thus having been transplanted from their native soil. "Again also, note the oftentimes wondrous im- provement in such respects of those persons who have removed from an iron -deficient soil to one rich in this essential element of animal life and health, and conse- quent bodily 'vim' and vigor. " And, my dear Juvenis, not at this time to cite other like important facts, of which the thoughtful and studious may readily become informed, what I have now set forth will lead you and others more fully to understand how and why some families, clans, tribes, nations, and peoples for long ages past have been, now are, and give promise long to be, strong, vigorous, and dominant; and why other sections of the same peoples MAN AMERICANIZED. IO3 (seemingly more favorably circumstanced) have long since decayed and are now numbered with the nations that have been. ' ' In these latter countries the soil constituents es- sential to the vigorous maintenance of high-grade vegetable and animal life had in the course of time been all but wholly consumed; and being without in- coming recuperative foreign supplies, both the vege- tables and animals (including man), gradually became extinct, or gave place to a scantier and lower grade of animal and vegetable life; and hence long fallow ages must pass ere the slow recuperative forces and pro- cesses of nature will restore a sufficiency of what is required again to nourish a higher order of life. And if such is to continue, the lacking elements of 'soil food' will wisely have to be procured from other portions of the earth containing in greater abundance those 'soil elements' that are deficient in their ov/n, it may be, otherwise favored land. 1 1 Thus also is clearly manifest the mutual interde- pendence of all peoples and all lands in this oft much ill-used, dear old world of ours — the nourishing mother of us all. 1 ' Nor, my dear Juvenis, do such important facts apply only to the exceptionally prominent soil qualities of human food supply, but they are also of potent uni- versal application to every kind and quality of our daily bread, and 'meat,' and drink, and to their effects 104 YE THOROUGHBRED. in the 'making' of a higher or a lower grade of human animals physically, mentally, morally, and otherwise. " For instance, it is startling to note how many human beings there are, even among so-called civil- ized peoples, who, in their voracity in devouring the flesh of 'other animals, ' are so little removed from the abhorred 'cannibals.' Nor is an inordinate appetite for the flesh of low-grade feral and domesticated animals wholly wanting among many so-called en- lightened peoples; and it is not an open question that inordinate flesh eaters possess and manifest, in a marked degree, bodily, passional, and other characteristics of striking likeness to those of the animals whose flesh they (and their progenitors for many generations) have eaten as a staple article of their daily food; and hence the not unneeded admonition of the ancient 'saw,' that 'he who feeds inordinately on "pork," will be "porcine;" on "beef," will be "bovine," ' and so on. And, moreover, it is not to be doubted but that the appalling salacity prevailing among so many peoples,, is largely attributable to dehumanizing foods and drinks. ' ' Now, while it must be admitted that the use of the flesh of some feral and domesticated animals will long continue to be more or less a necessity for many peoples in most lands, yet it is undoubtedly true in general, that those persons are wise who restrict them- selves more and more to the use for food of the higher MAN AMERICANIZED. 1 05 orders of fish, and fowl, and fruit, and other 'vegetables;' and, doubtless, it must also be acknowl- edged that many of the higher grades of mankind are by a still wiser course restricting themselves more fully, if not wholly, to the use of the most approved and improved fruits and other vegetable foods, and discarding the 'drinking usage' of all fluids excepting such as are contained in the vegetables eaten. 1 ' Moreover, the statement made by many flesh eaters that animal fats for food are a necessity in the colder climes, is not admitted by others who contend that the fats of fishes and fowls are for all food pur- poses superior to those of quadrupeds; and there are still others who, with much reason, aver that vegetable oils are much better than either for all the necessities of vigorous bodily sustenance in any clime, and that in vegetables alone are also contained (and in the best of nature-prepared forms) all the metals, minerals, acids, fluids, and the like, which are required for the maintenance, development, and nurture of the very highest grade of human beinjgs. It is also pointed out that the higher orders of feral and domestic animals whose flesh is used for human food, subsist, after weaning, wholly upon vegetables, and that water drinking is resorted to by them chiefly in the absence of a sufficiency of succulent food, and in a few other emergencies. Man is, unhappily, the 'drinking animal.' The initial step towards eradicating man's now pre- 106 YE THOROUGH BRED. vailing appetite for intoxicating liquors, is to eradicate the unnatural desire for water drinking or other fluid drinking of any sort or kind. " The drinking appetite is an abnormal 'inheri- tance.' * ' The perfected thoroughbred human being is a non- drinking animal. The juices of the grape, the orange, the pear, the apple, the melon, and of a multitude of other fruit and vegetable * foods,' amply suffice him for all necessary fluids. "And, my dear Juvenis, while, assuredly, the * weaning ' of the now world of ' flesh eaters ' and ' fluid drinkers ' will of necessity be slow, yet, in the meanwhile, the public health and the common welfare alike imperatively demand that the flesh, and all other animal products (now used as human food for old and young) , such as milk, cream, butter, cheese, lard, and the like, shall be those of young, healthy, and properly fed animals, and not of the aged, the decayed, the sickly, and the diseased, since it is an indisputable fact of fearful import, that the flesh and other edible pro- ducts of such decayed and otherwise diseased animals are wholly unfit for healthy human food. And they are also the fruitful causes of innumerable diseases, often of the most virulent kinds, such as fevers, blood and other body poisoning; and they are also the means of receiving into the human system many varieties of entosoa (such as trichinae in pork, and the like, whose MAN AMERICANIZED. IO7 vitality the ordinary heat for cooking does not destroy) and to which, often in untold numbers, the human body becomes a continual prey, and which are often the real cause of excruciating pains and generally irre- medial suffering. Of these facts all intelligent medical men and many others can abundantly testify; and hence society should imperatively demand to be more fully protected from the terrible effects upon old and young of suoh life and health- destroying animal foods. 1 ' And now, my dear Juvenis, in still further extend- ing the scope of my remarks at this interview, I need hardly remind you that no age of the world has equalled the present in the means and opportunities to learn the unmistakable and vitally important lessons of the past, relating to man individually and collec - tively, and successfully to apply them for the benefit of the present and the future. " In our own times, as it were, a new western world has been discovered, and much of its history has become known. A third, a fourth, a fifth, a sixth, and even a seventh generation of ' European ' men and women have been born and reared upon the vast areas of American soil, with individual, local, and national characteristics too marked to escape observa- tion, and too prominent and significant to be passed by without causing intelligent enquiry into the real, the potent causes which have produced them. " Hence, my dear Juvenis, in the elucidation of our loS YE THOROUGHBRED. theme, call to mind the bodily and other characteristics of the so-called aborigines of North America, from Labrador and Quebec on the northeast; from the steppes of north- central Canada, and Alaska on the northwest, and from these points south all over Canada and the United States of America, and in view of what I have said, carefully note the striking concord- ance of the bodily and other characteristics of the so-called aborigines with the mineral and vegetable character and composition of the soils, and the geologi- cal formations of their respective habitats; and in ocular proof thereof, mark the diminutive stature and the dwarfed bony fabric of the Esquimaux; the tall and often stalwart forms and combative characters of the numerous and widely-scattered tribes of such 'braves' of iron and rock as the Algonquins, the Iroquois, the Catawbas, the Mohawks, the Cherokees, the Uchees, the Natches, and the Dacotahs. Note also, in general, the comparatively peaceful character- istics of the southern Sioux, and other tribes of the Ohio and the Mississippi valleys, so prone to agricul- ture and residence in town and village groups; and consider, too, the Oregon and other far western tribes so little inclined to war, except in self-defense. " Moreover, no intelligent traveler can but have observed that, after a few generations, the European and other immigrants who supplanted these aborigines, have, in their turn, both in bodily and other character- MAN AMERICANIZED. IO9 istics, become, as it were, markedly manifest counter- parts, 'after their kind/ of those whom they sup- planted. "Thus, in stature and habits, the French- Canadian habitants of the northeast are markedly typical coun- terparts of the Esquimaux, the considerable variations which exist amongst them being but indices of the intercommingling of other aboriginal and European 'blood.' The diminutiveness of the prevailing type of their horses and cattle also indicates a like trend and teaches the same lesson. 1 ' The Acadian Scot also, having been transplanted into a soil of 'iron and lime,' perchance, sometimes even more congenial than his native heath, has not only 'held his own' bodily and otherwise, but it may be added that the type has materially improved ; in all which the close observer is forcibly reminded of the historical superiority of the aboriginal Micmacs, and the Etchemins (Canoemen) of the now maritime provinces. 1 ' And thus, too, the typical English emigrants who possessed themselves of what they called New England, became in but a few generations so far removed from the paternal type that the later incomers of their own kith and kin deemed them almost to have become another variety of the Caucasian species, and hence they derisively joined in dubbing them not English or British, but 'Yankees,' failing to perceive, in their iid y£ Thoroughbred. temporary blindness and antipathy, that they were accentuating and perpetuating an historical title of honor notably distinguishing an improved variety of the 'John Bull' original. In all this, however, the un- prejudiced observer clearly perceives that if 'Jonathan' (the typical 'Yankee') had lost in 'rotundity,' he had gained in 'stature'; if, in general, he had lost some- what in 'muscular strength,' he had gained in bodily activity and brain force; and if the pitch of the voice had gone a few removes upwards in the gamut, it had but followed the 'seat of power.' * ' In this trend of human type variation to what is generally admitted, in not a few respects at least, to have been an advanced human status, the New Knglanders were but markedly tending towards the bodily and other characteristics which preeminently distinguished their aboriginal antetypes, the dominat- ing tribes of the Massachusetts, the Pawtuckets, the Nipmucks, the Pokanokets, and not a few others, many of whose chiefs are well known to have been men of more than 'common mould.' 1 ' Among the notable Dutch and English emigrants who got possession of the great Eastern gateway of North America, and of the magnificent country around, precisely analogous variations of unique Caucasian type became markedly observable at an early period. ' ' The soil which had nourished the dominant Man- hattans, the Montauks, the Pequods, and the Mohawks, MAN AMERICANIZED. Ill soon evolved a distinguished European-American 'tribe,' whose prominent characteristics even at this day- impress upon the mind of an observant foreign on-looker the idea that, perhaps, unconsciously to themselves, there is manifest among these modern Manhattans a not altogether unfounded notion that they are among the vety foremost of the superior Commonwealth clans of the now great Republic. ( ' And so also it is of those of the I^and of the Minsi, the Delawares, the Shawnees, the Nanticokes, the Susquehannocks, the Powhattans, the Catawbas, the Cherokees, the Illinois, the Chickasas, and many- others of marked individual and tribal superiority. 11 But, my dear Juvenis, there is no necessity further to amplify what is so obviously manifest to every widely traveled and thoroughly observant ethno- graphist and ethnologist, that from the goodly bands of the brave Ontarios and the Ottawas, south to the 'tribes' bordering on the domains of Mexico, and from the extensive habitat of the most ancient Uchees on the southeast Atlantic coast to the far west tribal nations on the Pacific, the same all-important ethnic lessons for present and future benefit may be learned from the geographic character and characteristics of the 'tribal' children of the American soil, both aboriginal and modern. " Happily, however, for their own destiny and for the destiny of mankind, favoring fates did not (as of 112 Y3 THOROUGHBRED. old in unhappy Europe) suffer the improved and more powerfully developed individual, geographic, and ethnic characteristics of the homines novi of the New World to crystallize (by reversion) into a number of petty, independent, and antagonistic tribal nations, and thus to have postponed for ages, if not for aye, the pres- ent grand outcomes and coming possibilities of that fair 'land of the setting sun.' ' ' The far separation of those reinvigorated scions of the foremost races of western Kurope, from adverse foreign influences, their continuous contiguity of sea- coast location, their nearness of kinship, their common necessities and interests, their untrammeled home in- tercommerce, and their intermutually concordant ends and aims — all these and other auspicious congenital causes and influences begot and nourished within them a spirit of self-help, self-reliance, and personal courage thentofore all but unparalleled in history, and which but needed a sufficiently provocative exterior assault upon their common rights, and upon the common weal, completely to unite the necessarily weak disjecta membra into a united and powerful body for the common defense of liberty and right. 1 ' The awful crisis came, and the right triumphed. ' ' Then was laid the foundations oi a new political order of things in which ancient geographic colonial autonomy and locally important rights and privileges were measurably conserved in local or state legislative MAN AMERICANIZED. 1 13 authority, and the whole were welded into one great nation having supreme prerogatives and functions to conserve, administer, and execute the duly expressed will of the sovereign people in all things pertaining to the general welfare. 1 ' The amazing outcome has been that a congeries of fifty republics (having rejected the so-called divine rights of kings, and, in lieu thereof, having accepted the truly divine rights of humanity) are now included in a vast national domain extending over some twenty- five degrees of latitude, and some fifty degrees of longitude, thus averaging in breadth from south to north about fifteen hundred miles, and about three thousand miles in length, from the Atlantic on the east to the Pacific on the west ; and hence the citizens of the great Republic of republics dwell together on a greater continuous habitable land area of more favor- ing quality and situation than has ever hitherto been the heritage of any other civilized people under one national government. "And, my dear Juvenis, I may here advisedly remark that if the now British Colony of Newfound- land, and the now seven Provinces of Canada (with the four or five others yet to be formed therein), were peacefully united with this great fertile interfree-trade domain of the American Republic, it would be of the greatest possible benefit to Britain, to Canada, to New- foundland, and to the United States. Britain, Canada, 114 Y£ THOROUGHBRED. and Newfoundland would thereby be wholly freed from many ever impending disturbing international con- tingencies; the united peoples would in many ways be beneficent complements of each other; the hitherto sparse population of Canada and Newfoundland would thereby be speedily increased; far greater racial harmony and domestic prosperity throughout what is now British North America would soon be manifest; the commerce of the united countries, not only between themselves, but with Great Britain and the rest of the world, would soon be vastly augmented; the fraternal and intercommercial federation of the 'new America* and the British Empire would be assured; and a new era of general peace and prosperity would be in- augurated. 1 ' And, resuming the trend of my remarks, I may say that although prophets of evil (whose wish was father to their thoughts) predicted that this, as they called it, great modern Utopian experiment of govern- ment in the United States, chiefly from the want of cohesion and assimilative force, would in a generation or two fall to pieces, crumbling again into its original and aboriginal tribal or colonial elements, or other- wise having been broken up, would become the prey of Caesarism in some despotic form; — yet no; after repeated severe trials from without and from within, the Great United Republic has now entered upon the second decade of the second century of its acknowl- MAN AMERICANIZED. H5 edged notable existence, and seemingly is fast forging its way towards the foremost place among the en- lightened, powerful, progressive nations of the earth. " And, my dear Juvenis, calling to mind the myriads of aboriginal inhabitants; the mercenary and forced transference thereto in great numbers of a people of far-removed origin and habitat; the seemingly all but unavoidable incursions of long downtrodden hordes of alien low-grades; the multitudes of half-breeds, oft the unhappy outcomes of unnatural miscegenation; and carefully considering the vital necessity of so far digesting, assimilating, and incorporating such a mass of unnutritious elements as that, if possible, to some redemptive extent at least, they might become nourish- ing aliment of the 'body politic;' — considering, I say, all such, it is the miracle of the ages that the 'young giant' of the Western World has not long ere this fallen a prey to the worst form of 'national dyspepsia,' social, moral, ecclesiastical, and political. And every well-wisher of his race will devoutly pray that local and national 'sanitation' of all kinds may ward off or remove this dread 'epidemic,' and ever preserve local and national health, strength, and prosperity. * ' And, my dear Juvenis, you fittingly enquire what, along with those I have already intimated, are some of the other fundamental causes which have so power- fully operated to produce the wondrously peculiar (t.