The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1896-09-07
DIR. D. S. JORDAN's VIEWS
Stanford's President Starts an
Intellectual Tenn
blor.
TALES AS WEIRD as ALADDIN.
He Tells of Strange Experiments, and
Local Thinkers Open Their Eyes
in Wonder.

President David Starr Jordan of STAN
ford University has set scientists and the
thinking men OF San Francisco to wonder
ing what has befalIen him-all on account
OF a strange monograph which appears
under his name in the Popular Science
Monthly" for September.
The article, which shook up the thinkers
ii the Pacific Union and Bohemian Clubs
as some temblor might shake the earth,
pears the strange title, THE Sympsycho-
graph A Study of Impressionist Physics,
and before one reads TO the end he finds
the cold man of science, "the professor
of classified knowledge" as he has been
called, dealing. with great sang froid, with
stories as remarkable as the tales of Alad
din, apparently giving credence to facts as
weird as anything ever told of adopts in
the occult, stories that tax the believing
powers of the ordinary layman of the
nineteenth century as much as the fable
OF Action, the celebrated hunter, who,
having seen Diana bathing, was forthwith
changed into d stag and hunted to death
by his own hounds.
Some of the members of the Pacific
Union Club became so exercised over the
strange revelations that they have written
to Alcalde for further details OF what was
done.
The learned doctor of physics, psychlcs
and other forms OF knowledge simp and
occult tells of the wonderful doings of
1.-The Astral Camera Club of AIcalde, or
ganZed In November, 1895, for the pur-
poses of scientific research through the
medium of photography" By long de-
grees the club, says the professor, went
far beyond the experiments of Professor
Roentgen and the achieve ments of the
famous X ray, and got to point where its
experts could photograph cat, or any
such physical organism, without the pres
ence of the animals, the photograph being
transferred to the sensitive plate in some
strange manner by the exposure of the
plate to the intense gaze OF a man who
had IN his mind clear mental picture of
the cat. In other words, under the latest
demonstrated theory, so Dr.. David Starr
Jordan narrates, it is not necessary to
have cat before camera to obtain cats
photograph. All that the expert pho
tographer needs is a thinker who concen-
trates his mind on some given physical
object, and the operator says to the
thinker who sits for a cats photograph,
''You think of cat and the camera does
the rest.
The sage of Stanford brings the reader to
the story in its fullness by easy stages,
beginning as follows:
AS soon as the news of the marvellous expert
ments of Professor Roentgen had reached AL
calde, the Camera Club began work on the X
rays and on the larger problem Of the signih-
canoe OF photography without visible light
They had no difficulty in repeating the usual
experiments. They got an outline OF the
pocketboo the bones OF finger surrounded
by gold ring and the location OF an I'm bedded
shot. Thus those strange rays of light, or odic
force, Invisible to our eyes, because none of
our ancestors ever had chance to gaze upon
them, disclosed the presence OF objects which
had else lain forever in darkness. In addition
to this, the green light of the vacuum tubes
provoked that uncanny feeling which always
precedes and presages great discovery in
occult science. From this feeling the club
was safe in predicting that far greater dis
coveries were to follow, and that the X rays
would not end in mere repetitions OF Roent
gems triumphs in 'fskiography."
In this they were not disappointed Pro-
lessor lnglis Rogers of London found that not
only could pictures be produced in darkness
visible waves sent out through the ether by
the mind could also affect q sensitive plate
Just as one sensitive mind at a distance re-
celves an image sent out from the psychic
retina OF another so could the same image be
concentrated and fixed upon Photographic
plate. Profess or Rogers in amatter-of-fact " ay
looked for few minutes at a postage-stamp,
then retired to dark room and gaZed through
Inc lens OF the camera at the sensitive plate.
LIE inquire OF the postage-stamp was on his
mind, and from his mind 1t passed out through
he sensitive ether to the plate made ready to
receive II. The result was photograph of tn e
stamp-small and little blurred, put showing
the undoubted features of the gracious Queen
and the words tone penny" Thus was the
bridge between psychic power and photo
graphic sensitiyeness made once for all This
connection established, there is naturally nc
limit to the application OF the principle.
From the foregoing experiment DR.. Jor.
dan is able to conclude, by logical pro-
cesses, that the principle is really not new.
and that some such marvellous powers
have been known to exist through all the
ages. He says:
1t thus becomes plain that the invisible rays
of Roentgen are not light in the common sense
but akin rather to the brain emauations m
odic forces, which pass from mind to mind
without the intervention of forms of gross
matter as medium, and to winch gross m At.
Ter in all its forms is subject
Nor is this principle new in the philosophv
of man. The wise of all ages have held that
mind is sovereign over matter Besides This
general law 1t has been known to our fathers
that in the eye OF the dying man is Impressed
the last scene on which he looked in life
With instruments Oppression we may examine
that scene, and by skiilful photography we
should be able to secure and fix it for all time
The achievement OF the delicate task OF
photographing cat from mental image
as DR.. Jordan relates, does not belong
wholly to the California Club of AlcaIde.
part of the fame belonging to English in.
vestigators, who went beyond the expert
ment of photographing a stamp from 8
mental image. DR.. Jordan says:
1t is therefore not necessary for this expert
ment that one should gaze at an individual
stamp. To think OF a stamp will serve as well
Recognizing this fact Cameron Lee another
English experimenter, attempted to secure the