This is very far from Puritan doctrine and it partially satisfies Combe who says:
“The phrenological doctrine, that every faculty is manifested by a distinct organ; that the Creator constituted the organ, and ordained its functions; that therefore each is good in itself, and has a legitimate sphere of action; but that each is also liable to be abused, and that abuse constitutes sin . . . approaches closely to Dr. Taylor’s views . . . as expressed in the preceding letter. There is a general opinion abroad that Dr. Taylor is still progressive in his opinions, and that he will announce further modifications of Calvinism. Those who embrace liberal opinions in theology say that they expect him still farther to purify the faith of Connecticut; while those who adhere to the ancient creed express their fears that the extent of his backslidings is not yet fully developed.”
The full phrenological doctrine of responsibility, according to Combe’s confession, makes necessary a new interpretation of the scriptures. It divides men into three great classes depending on the proportionate size of the moral organs and the organs of the propensities. Where the former are great we have good and wise men with the power to know what is right and to do it. These “are justly liable to be punished by the law if they do what it proclaims to be wrong.” In the second class, the moral faculties and the animal propensities (which we might call the impulses) are more in equilibrium and such persons “experience strong impulses both to good and evil, and their actual conduct is greatly influenced by circumstances. . . . If uneducated, and exposed to want and vicious society they may lapse into crime . . .” and occasionally the opposite is true. For these men, the fear of punishment is a desirable influence. In this the phrenologist makes a departure from the judgment of Owen, based on the same assumptions. The third class are those in which the propensities overbear the moral and intellectual faculties and they “are incapable of resisting the temptations to crime presented by ordinary society.” The phrenologist came half way to the ground now taken by the radical criminologist, for Combe calls this third class “moral patients” and suggests not punishment, but restraint. Other phrenologists, with a loftier conception of their mission, believed that even a grown man could develop the counteracting propensity and be converted from a life of crime. In New England, Combe’s audience crowded around him after his lectures and asked him to reconcile phrenology and the doctrine of total corruption. He replied that that was the business of those who believed in that doctrine. The liberals, in these conversations, told him that phrenology was highly considered among them because it proved they were right in abandoning original sin. But as Combe left no place for repentance, conviction of sin, and regeneration even in his third class, he was obliged to say that “men must revise their interpretation of the scripture, and bring them into harmony with nature and truth.”
In some ways, then, the phrenological cult had a profound effect on the development of American character. First it favored the cult of the individual. Or it would be equally accurate to say that phrenology drew from the American atmosphere certain tendencies to individualism and adapted itself to the American character. The two things, phrenology and the political and physical circumstances of American life, interacted. Phrenology and mesmerism both made man more interesting to himself, as psychology and psychoanalysis did half a century later. Mesmerism suggested unknown powers, and phrenology either justified action or taught the doctrine of self-development and self-control. This was dangerous doctrine in a country which lacked a strong disciplinary government, and was engaged in breaking down the tremendous discipline of morality imposed by a religion in which sin and punishment were essential features. Toward this break-down, again, phrenology contributed enormously, not only in its proper activity, but by suggesting new forms of thought to philosophers and publicists, and by substituting an indulgent habit of mind for the severer justice and the tyrannical temperament of the old type of divine. Had phrenology come to America before Methodism began its fermentation, it would have been persecuted as a heresy and possibly rejected entirely. Actually, when it came, it could count on the support of many sects, the Universalists and the Unitarians particularly and, by giving to them a supposedly scientific foundation, it sharpened the ax which liberalism was laying at the root of the old Christianity of Calvin with its disciplines and responsibilities, its punishments and its dubious rewards.
[1] To avoid those which cannot be proved, and to escape false miracles arranged by its enemies for future exposure. A French couplet of the time of the Jansenists runs:
[2] The connection with the moral theories of Robert Owen is notable.
[3] Whereas it is a commonplace of amateur psychoanalysis (our current substitute for phrenology) that affection for pets is a certain symptom of suppressed murderous desires.
[4] Cf. page 368.
† Into a few luxurious houses “elevators or hoistways” were introduced and, at second-hand shops, as much as $20 each were given for colonial chairs and $40 for Grandfather’s clocks. Gobelin carpets, pictures by Church, and statues by Powers, were possessed only by the few and it was considered proper to skirt the edge of a room in order to save the carpet. † The confectioners of New York imported pears from France; the population of the city was about 600,000, and half that number of immigrants passed through it annually. Brick for domestic building was disappearing. † Railroads stopped to let passengers lunch on ham, fried oysters, pumpkin pie, and spirits; the gauge was changed at the state lines of New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, and the city of Erie tore up rails of identical gauges in order to force trains to stop there. † The Croton aqueduct was a great sight in New York and the Astor house, opposite Barnum’s, printed its own menu daily. The Five Points was the rendezvous of the vicious and the impoverished. † Barbers’ chairs were built for ease and lassitude and city graft was enormous. † The Editor’s Table in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine for November, 1853, contained the following: “The most serious importance of this modern ‘woman’s rights’ doctrine is derived from its direct bearing upon the marriage institution. The blindest must see that such a change as is proposed in the relation and life of the sexes cannot leave either marriage or the family in their present state. It must vitally, and in time wholly sever that oneness which has ever been at the foundation of the marriage idea, from the primitive declaration of Genesis to the latest decision of the common law. . . . That which makes no change in the personal relations, the personal rights, the personal duties, is not the holy marriage union, but the unholy alliance of concubinage.”
† After 1855 kerosene supplanted lard and other animal oils as an illuminant. † Women wore skeleton skirts made of strips of iron of the quality of watch springs and men wore false chests. † The Hungarian patriot, Kossuth, was received by the government and started the vogue for soft felt hats. Talma Capes were also worn.
XX. The Business of Prophecy.
PHRENOLOGY doubtless had a helpful effect on the moral tone. At its best, it helped to analyze and to mold character. But the prophets were much more attracted to the creative processes of mesmerism, handling it as another weapon against orthodoxy. The earliest of them, Andrew Jackson Davis, began his career as the trance medium of that Professor Grimes who had discovered the science of Etherology by combining the principles of Mesmer and of Spurzheim. To Davis, the world owes its present respect for mediums. In Europe, the hypnotist had always been considered the significant figure; Davis was the first medium to claim divine inspiration.
He was born in Blooming Grove, Orange County, New York, in 1826. He was a delicate child, given to somnambulism, hallucinations and, possibly, to epileptic fits. His parents were desperately poor, and it is not remarkable that one of the first voices he heard from the Beyond commanded him to “eat plenty of bread and molasses.” A little later he heard a voice saying, “A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump,” and, as he was then without satisfactory occupation, he took to peddling yeast through the country. He attended revivals, but failed to “t
ake it.” In 1844, after he had acted as clairvoyant for two practitioners of animal magnetism, he had his revelation. Galen and Swedenborg appeared to him, in a cemetery, and revealed to him the secrets of healing. Davis forthwith proceeded to New York and went into business as a medical clairvoyant. His ministry was tremendously successful and his explanation of his methods was satisfactory to the public:
“By looking through space directly into Nature’s laboratory, or else into medical establishments, I easily acquired the common (and even the Greek and Latin) names of various medicines and also of many parts of the human structure,” he says. By looking through space, he diagnosed ills and, on one occasion, prescribed the fat of thirty-two weasels as an element in a cure. He became so popular that there was talk of making him physician-in-ordinary to the Senate of the United States. But his healing presently became less important than his revelation of a new order of the universe. He was swept away on the current of spiritualism—the first manifestations of which occurred soon after his own revelation—and, going into self-induced trances, he dictated book after book, on every subject, until he was justified in going into the publishing business to issue his own works. Scientists, philosophers, and ministers of the gospel stood around the young man as he lay with closed eyes dictating to stenographers. Albert Brisbane, fresh from communication with the finest minds of Europe, gave him respectful hearing during these trances. Out of them came The Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelations and a Voice to Mankind, in which the editor of the Westminster Review discovered affinities with Kant, Hegel, and Goethe. The book was published in 1847 in the size of a family album with eight hundred pages. It ran into thirty-four editions and was eagerly read until after the Civil War. The opening paragraph explains why Davis called words “deceptive aprons of obscurity”:
“In the beginning the Univercælum was one boundless, undefinable, and unimaginative ocean of Liquid Fire! The most vigorous and ambitious imagination is not capable of forming an adequate conception of the height and depth and length and breadth thereof. There was one vast expanse of liquid substance. It was without bounds—inconceivable—and with qualities and essences incomprehensible. This was the original condition of Matter. It was without forms, for it was but one Form. It had no motions, but it was an eternity of Motion. It was without parts, for it was a Whole. Particles did not exist, but the Whole was one Particle. There were no suns, but it was one Eternal Sun. It had no beginning and it was without end. It had no length, for it was a Vortex of one Eternity. It had no circles, for it was one Infinite Circle. It had no disconnected power, but it was the very essence of Power. Its inconceivable magnitude and constitution were such as not to develop forces, but Omnipotent Power!”
In other works Davis declared that free will did not exist, and therefore there was no sin—this being his deduction from phrenology and liberal theology—and predicted the coming of a socialist state. It is said that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle still holds him in great respect.
Among Davis’s disciples was a young poet, Thomas Lake Harris, who might have remained for ever in obscurity if he had not drastically touched the life of a brilliant English family. Harris was born in England. Like Davis, he was a visionary child. Like him, he broke away from established religion. He first became a Universalist, then a disciple of Davis. Eventually he quarreled with his master. Davis had found his spiritual affinity and, with the consent of her husband, an Indiana divorce had been arranged, so that the affinities might be joined in marriage. The disciple had other ideals, as we shall see. He left New York and, “under divine guidance,” founded a socialist community at Mountain Cove, Virginia. This having failed, Harris went to England to preach his gospel. In Marylebone Street and at Steinway Hall he attracted handfuls of listeners. One of them was Lawrence Oliphant.
Oliphant was “the pet of society,” a “child of fortune,” who had returned to England after a brilliant career in the diplomatic service. His father had been Chief Justice at Ceylon. The son was an amateur of big game shooting and exploring. He had traveled in Russia, and up the Nile, and in Asia. He was so exceptional a journalist that Delane, of the Times, offered him four guineas a column, twice the usual rate, to keep him from a rival journal. His life was gay and his mind untroubled except for an occasional weariness and a touch of wonder about the significance of human endeavor. When he came to America with Lord Elgin he enjoyed champagne, ices, strawberries, and bright eyes. His first contact with cranks startled him. On this occasion, he was staying at the home of a Senator who was a Methodist and a teetotaler, whose wife was a spiritualist medium, and whose daughter was married to an atheist, and wore bloomers. Oliphant was merely amused; he had no tendency toward cults. After service as First Secretary of Legation in Tokio, where he narrowly escaped assassination, he returned to England to be triumphantly elected to the House of Commons.
Before he took his seat, he met Thomas Lake Harris and fell instantly under his sway. The first compulsion Harris put upon him was complete silence in the House for two years. Oliphant obeyed, and the political career which all of England expected to rival that of Pitt and Fox was at an end. Harris returned to America and founded a community at Brocton. In 1867, Oliphant followed and was set to work cleaning stables, “gloomy silent labor for days and days,” he writes, during which he was not permitted to address a word to any living being. He cleaned stables until nine at night and then drew water for two hours. His mother came to live at the colony but she and her son were forbidden to meet except as strangers. Oliphant made over his entire estate to Harris who said, “Those who come here must have no country, no relations or friends, no pursuits but such as are given them of God.” When Oliphant returned to Europe, Harris told him that he would be summoned back by a sign. The sign was to be a bullet entering the room in which Oliphant sat. (Later, when Oliphant was a correspondent in Paris during the Commune, the sign came, and he straightway left his work to return to Harris.)
In England, Oliphant met Alice L’Estrange. They fell in love and, although Oliphant explained his devotion to the mysterious American leader, the girl was willing to marry him. For a time Harris refused consent, and Oliphant wrote, calling Harris by the title given to him at the colony, “Father’s pressure is an awful pressure, but it is a blessed one.” Eventually, Harris permitted the marriage to take place, apparently in preparation for a more bitter test of his disciple. As soon as they came to America, Alice Oliphant was sent to Santa Rosa, where Harris had established a subsidiary community, and her husband was kept in New York and in Canada. The separation was long and, for Alice Oliphant, it was desperately hard. Having been set at work she could not do, she escaped from the colony and lived miserably as a teacher in a tiny settlement in California.
The lovers were united over the body of Oliphant’s mother. Whether he specifically claimed it or not, Harris had given Oliphant the impression that he could conquer death. When he failed to save Oliphant’s mother, the disciple turned on the master, “the scales fell from his eyes,” he sued to recover his property, left America and, living in out-of-the-way places, wrote books on mysticism. It is recorded that General Gordon came to call on him and the two agreed that they were the craziest fellows alive. When his wife died, Oliphant married Rosamond, daughter of Robert Dale Owen, because he needed her as a medium to communicate with the dead woman.
What was the power which Harris exerted? In a novel which Oliphant wrote, he created a character, Mr. Massolam, obviously a picture of Harris. He tells us that the leader’s voice was pitched in two keys; a near voice which was kindly and vivacious, a far-off voice, solemn and impressive; the two mingling in a ventriloquistic and slightly unpleasant effect. His gray-black hair fell in massive waves over his ears. His brows were bushy and overhanging. His eyes were two revolving lights in dark caverns. His face had a Semitic cast, emphasized by mustache and beard. The figure, in short, is that of an ordinary crank. Nor does the poetry of Harris give us any clew to his influence. In 1856, he wrote A Lyric
of the Morning Land, dedicated (in Gothic lettering) to the Pure in Heart. The first part of the poem is entitled “History” and begins
“This poem is a Love-child of the skies;
’Twas bred in Heaven with breath like bridal blooms.”
The whole is a chaos out of which emerges the announcement of a further poem by the same author, Marriage, a Lyric of the Golden Age, which was to be a “page of angel history.” Of the first poem, the author gives an account in an appendix:
“On the first of January, 1854, at the hour of noon, the archetypal ideas were internally inwrought by spiritual agency into the inmost mind of the Medium, he at that time having passed into a spiritual or interior condition. From that time till the fourth of August, fed by continual influxes of celestial life, these archetypal ideas internally unfolded . . . until at length . . . they . . . uttered themselves in speech, and were transcribed as spoken by the Medium, he, by spiritual agencies, being temporarily elevated to the spiritual degree of the mind . . . and the external forms being rendered quiet by a process which is analogous to physical death. . . . In his external waking condition he had not the remotest knowledge or conception of any part of the poem.”
This is the trance of Andrew Jackson Davis again. In his leading ideas, however, Harris passed beyond Davis. The picture of Oliphant may remind modern readers of contemporary mystic colonies at Fontainebleau and elsewhere. The doctrine anticipates parts of Christian Science and of Yoga. A fundamental exercise was called “inner breathing” or “inner respiration.” Both Harris and Oliphant claimed to be able to dispense with the ordinary forms of breathing and, by some mystic channel, to absorb “the atmosphere of Heaven not only into the spiritual, but also into the natural lungs.” This is close to the inhalation of Prana which we shall find in Yoga. Harris gave it an extreme significance, for he says that internal respiration “leads to counterpartal marriage . . . man in his true or unfallen state being twain-one or dual in nature.”
The Stammering Century Page 40