The Durham recorder. [volume] (Durham, N.C.) 1879-19??, 1895-04-03
POSSIBILITIES or SCIENCE.

now call the hypnotic state, it is
clear that the commands issued
even from afar by one who had
produced that hypuotic state,
and even by others to whom he
has transmitted his authority,
are heard and obey ed. We have
no notion how they are so heard
and obeyed. But it is clear that
what is audible or visible to one
organ in a state artificially pro-
duced bvwhat we call the hyp-
motto trance, without in the least
knowing what it means, might
well be audible or visible TO
differently constituted organ in
is natural state. And there.
fore it is not at all impossible
that there are in existence or
gans which convey to other
creatures, without any hypno,
tizing, those same messages
which only become articulate t.
us under conditions which re
semble the sudden giving out OF
what is called ''latent heat" by
the physicists.
But If any one supposes that
what is now established as
Thought reading" is due to thu
carrying of a new kind of quasi
electric message through the
other, and that the exercise of a
strong volition renders this
thought reading possible-so
that an organization properly
qualified for the purpose, as a
hypnotizer may be supposed TO
be, can, as it were, speak to a
distant friend by force of will
alone without. uttering any aud.
ible sound-we do not know to
what developments this kind of
sympathetic whispering may
not lead. Apparently organiza
tons not naturally qualified for
thought reading may, by the
help of the hypnotizsr, be arti-
ficially rendered sensitive of
these more or less UNCONSCIOUS
communications, so as to result
in actions which would ordi-
narily be interpreted as proceed
ing from knowledge of what at
a distance and far out of the
hearing or sight of the person
who appears 10 be influenced by
that knowledge. In other words,
on this theory of the phenomena.
vibrations of the ether. which
would otherwise be lost upon a
man may, by careful prepara-
ton, gain access to him, just as
vibrations of sound. which are
otherwise lost, so preserved by
the telephone as to be audible
within two or three hundred
miles.
Now, if by what we usually
call a mere moral effort, a
thought or even a sentence, can
be directed to a given rain, just
as the apparatus of the telephone
directs it, there is no particular
reason why some means should
not be found of interceptine
some of the lower ANIMALS and
another, so as to tap them in
the same way in which an cleo
trician at an intermediate point
taps the electric cable of mes
sage intended for a more distant
gal. And so the fair story
fancy that'a man might be So
endowed as 10 overhear the con-
versations Of insects or birds
might be realized. All these
speculations are of course pure
dreams, but they are dreams
which are suggested as not al
together impossible, but the ex.
traordinary extension of the
possibilities Of a vibrating ether,
accepted by the science of our
day. To the generation which
has become familiar with the
phonograph and thought read
ing it will hardly seem a sheer
impossibility that we might one
day be able to arrest and de-
cipher the less intricate mes
sages Of purely instructive i'm.
port which pass between the
ants of a single nest, or the
rocks Of q single rookery, or the
chimpanzees Of a single family
Indeed the last feat has, accord.