THE OD FORCE

LETTERS ON A NEWLY DISCOVERED POWER IN NATURE AND ITS RELATION TO MAGNETISM, ELECTRICITY, HEAT AND LIGHT

BY

BARON VON REICHENBACH

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854 by B. B. Mussey & Co., In the Clerks Office of the District Court for the Dist. Of Massachusetts

CONTENTS PREFACE ..................................................................................................................3 By the Author and Translator LETTER 1..................................................................................................................5 Sensitive Persons. LETTER 2..................................................................................................................8 Od, Crystals, The Dark Room. LETTER 3..................................................................................................................10 The Sun, The Moon, The Iris. LETTER 4..................................................................................................................12 Magnetism. LETTER 5..................................................................................................................15 Animal Magnetism. LETTER 6..................................................................................................................17 Man, The Bearer of Od. LETTER 7..................................................................................................................18 Mesmerism, The Magnetic Pass and Magnetic Doctors. LETTER 8..................................................................................................................20 Chemism. LETTER 9..................................................................................................................23 Sound, Friction, Springs. LETTER 10................................................................................................................24 Heat, Electricity, The Material Creation. LETTER 11................................................................................................................27 Examples From the Material Creation. LETTER 12................................................................................................................29 Loading and Conduction of Od. Approximation. LETTER 13................................................................................................................31 Dualism of Od. LETTER 14................................................................................................................34 The Rainbow of Od. The Polar Light of Our Globe. LETTER 15................................................................................................................36 Magnetism and Odism of Our Globe. LETTER 16................................................................................................................38 Velocity of Conduction. Radiation. Distance of Projectile Motion of Od. Atmosphere of Od. Odoscope. Etymology of the Word Od. Conclusion.

PREFACE. Whatever is true proves a power not only by being uttered but far more by being. The following letters, treating of a new dynamic in nature, are a reprint, slightly modified, from the Universal Gazette of Augsburg. They proposed, as was frankly avowed at the time, to appeal to the German public against the injustice of certain professional scholars, who did not bring forward their arguments but their scientific authority, for previously declaring the present researches inadmissible and for discrediting them, in the public opinion, unexamined, as entirely worthless. Every new thing ought to stand the contest with the old; the reluctance to give way to the former arouses resistance from the latter. I have not been disappointed: many of the facts which I have established are universally known, standing firmly and safely against any dialectic attack, hundreds of thousands of the German people giving evidence thereto. The conclusions drawn from these facts are almost self evident, and public opinion, sensible of truth, has received my labours with favour. It is evident, from the mixed public to be addressed that treatises of this description in a political newspaper ought to be limited to some incidental hints. Some of the chief points are set forth as plainly as possible, avoiding amplification, as this is all which the space will allow. The "Universal Gazette" has given us, oftentimes series of interesting letters of a scientific stamp,- astronomical, chemical, geological, phrenological, physiological, but, in comparison with these I have written under evident disadvantage. They had nothing to relate but known or acknowledged truths, which nobody would dispute. My letters on the contrary, represent almost exclusively new things, or, at least, new aspects of known things; and, therefore they are obliged not only to propound some doctrine but also to furnish the arguments The former are more on a level and beaten path; the latter are obliged to clear their way through the thorns of contesting opinions. Thus I feel obliged to preface the present letters, and to refer those of my readers who should look for a more circumstantial explanation, for an argumentation more strict, or for an investigation more profound, to my work already published "Researches into the Dynamids of Magnetism, etc." and, as for more ample information, I must beg to be excused till a more minute treatise on the researches carried on- which I have for some time been engaged in- shall be finished; wherein there will occur some investigations more extended than those which are treated of in the present letters. Baron Von Reichenbach, Castle Reisenberg, near Vienna, August, 1852. PREFACE OF THE TRANSLATOR The treatise I am about to lay before the American public, produced a deep sensation, a year ago, when it was published in Germany. It treats of a new dynamic, or; power of nature, unknown till now, though related intimately to those already explored, such as light, heat, magnetism, electricity etc.; in short, to the rest of the so-called imponderable substances. Everybody knows what an important part the latter play in the general economy of nature, and how profoundly their effects influence the physical as well as the physiological condition of man. It is more than a century since the celebrated Dr Samuel Hahnemann,

originator of the homoeopathic in medicine discovered the great principle the healing art, "similia similibus curantur," and, nearly at the same time, the miraculous effects upon the human system of drugs, when reduced to atoms and brought in contact with the most minute outlets of nervous matter in the living organism. For he proved by experience beyond all doubt, that there may be developed by friction and trituration from the monocules of matter, as earths, metals, liquids, gases, plants and animals, forces capable of altering in a very short interval the disposition of any living constitution, as soon as such efficacious dynamics are brought into immediate contact with the most delicate fibres of organised matter in its highest development; to wit, with the nervous tissue. Each of the great discoveries in our century in succession in chemistry, physics, physiology, geology, mechanics, etc., has contributed to confirm the general truth, that the greatest effect through all nature is produced by forces engrafted upon matter in its most minute forms, sometimes, indeed, even so small as to escape the unaided senses. When Daguerre taught people how to make an accurate likeness of all objects in existence by means of the sunbeam- by the atom of light projected through the boundless space of the universe at a velocity of nearly two hundred thousand miles in one second- he discovered at the same time that the most efficacious rays of light were lying beyond the boundaries of the visible iris as it were, a dark and latent light. The recent researches of French end German naturalists have proved the electric force to be spread all over nature in such abundance that, for instance, in one drop of water there may be found more of this force than a steam-engine of many hundreds of horse-power is able to produce; and this electric force, constrained in subserviency to man, has, even in its present limited application, already annihilated both the name and the effects of resistance in the calculations of men, respecting their mental intercourse; to wit, the locomotion of thought. Who does not remember that, scarcely a century ago, the assertion that the reefs and islands of coral in the Pacific were the work of microscopic animals, was contested a l'outrance, ridiculed and sneered at! The same thing happened in respect to the discovery that some of the largest mountain ridges on our globe consist of nothing more than a residuum of similar Liliputians of the animal kingdom, forming huge masses of solid rock, in some cases many thousand feet high. But all these things were palpable, pervious even to the understanding of the unlearned; these new discoveries being susceptible of immediate application to practical purposes of common life, and being turned, of consequence, to universal use. There were, and are, however, "- more things in heaven and earth Than are dreamt of in your philosophy" and every discovery like those just mentioned has, locked within it, like the jewel-box in the Arabian tale, a hidden treasure, more precious than that. Thus we go on, step by step, unravelling the most delicate and refined secrets of nature. Certainly as Goethe sung, "What nature to discover would give to man no clue He never would extort by crucible or screw;

but science, that is, the result or deposit of an infinite series of investigations, observations, and thoughts, furnishes man with the key that can reveal one by one all the powers of nature, and the intrinsic value of the latter as to the phenomena of the visible world. Nothing has, however, up to the present time, more baffled the researches of the learned, than the so-called forecast or projection of a spiritual world into this material one of ours. All thaumaturgists of antiquity, all wizards and sorcerers of the middle ages, all visionaries and spiritual mediums of modern time, have known, or feigned to know, something thereabout. They were endowed, without doubt, with a peculiar sense for observing certain phenomena invisible to the rest of the world, and therefore they felt justified in asserting that they stood in an intimate and immediate relation to the invisible world, to the realm of the spirits. What a mass of popular delusions has been based, from the most distant times down to our own age, upon assertions like these! And have we not lived to see in our own days, the conjurers from the dead rising up again in spiritual manifestations, in the rappings and tiltings of tables, chairs and hats? Indisputable facts, it is true were in existence to give credit to idle imaginations of such a kind; but, confounded by the oddity of these facts, the learned have neglected to sift the matter thoroughly, and to look for the natural causes of them. Our author, on the contrary, was not afraid to go on in that direction. After having picked up all those strange peculiarities that occur in a certain class of people, in respect to their feelings and actions in common life, the so called idiosyncrasies, he tried to put them to the test of the principles of science. He has laid down the results of his former researches in this regard in his work, Researches on the Dynamids of Magnetism, Electricity, heat Light, etc, in their Relations to the Vital Force", a work which even attracted the attention of the great Berzelius. The facts which he obtained in the course of these investigations led him to views more extended and to experiments more minute, which he has dilated upon in the letters, a translation of which I offer herewith to the American reader. As strange as may seem, the conclusions our author draws from the facts obtained by experiment, carefully and repeatedly executed, they, will deserve at least a fair trial; that is, a careful examination, according to the method plainly described in these letters. We do not by any means avert that the axioms set up by the author are irrefutable, and beyond all criticism; but we believe that in order to refute them, there must be facts drawn from experiment and arguments based upon science. Thus we send this little book into the world, begging nothing else for it but an impartial examination, and, at least, as much of active sympathy as the spiritual manifestations have met with in this country, without having justified, in our bumble opinion, their claim to such devoted attention. The Translator SENSITIVE PERSONS My dear friend; did you never in your life meet with people who showed the strange peculiarity of an apparent aspersion to everything yellow- to that colour in general? A beautiful lemon, a shining gold colour, a brilliant orange, are surely pleasant objects. What is it that could be offensive in them? Ask such people what colour they are fond of; you will be answered, almost uniformly, blue. The azure depths of the sky afford, no doubt a pleasant sight; when, however, the evening sun encompasses them with a golden fringe, there will certainly be added to the beautiful, the more beautiful, the splendid, the gorgeous! If I had to

choose whether I should pass my inner life in a room painted straw colour, or in one of a light blue, I should probably prefer the former. Every lover of blue to whom I have said so has laughed at me and pitied my bad taste. I shall invert the question, and should like to hear from you, if you have ever met with any person who would declare that he abhorred blue. Certainly- never. Nobody ever shrank from blue. For what reason, then, is there such an agreement in disgust for yellow, and predilection for blue, with some persons? We know, from the theory of colours, that yellow and blue are in a mutual relation; both are complementary colours which exhibit a kind of polar contrast. May it not be that there is hidden under this something beyond the mere effect upon our faculty of sight- an unknown deference more profound than the simple optical difference of colour that we are all acquainted with? And may there not be, moreover, a difference between men in general as to their sensibility to such a difference, so that some would be able to perceive what others had not the faculty of descrying? May there not be, as it were, people of two different sorts of senses? Such would, indeed, be a peculiar phenomenon. Let us, then, further investigate this subject. Girls like to gaze in the looking-glass; neither are there wanting men who are wont to rejoice in their own reflection. And who would, indeed, object to their doing so, when a striking counterfeit of God's beautiful masterpiece is smiling from the looking glass exciting the anticipation of a victory to be won by it? Is there anything more charming. more splendid, in the world, than a beautiful human being? Why, may it not be possible that there are girls, women, nay, even men, who are accustomed to shun the mirror; who would turn their back to it, not being able to endure the refection of their own faces? Certainly, there are such specimens. There are people- neither do these occur rarely- in whom the looking-glass produces a peculiar sensation of anxiety, as if a lukewarm, loathsome breath were touching them, so that they cannot even for a minute quietly endure it. The glass not only reflects upon themselves their counterfeit, but throws back on them all impression ineffably painful, stronger with some, less strong, with others perceptible with many so slightly as to leave behind only a vague aversion to the looking-glass. Why, what is this? What is its origin? Why do some people only feel it, and not all? You have travelled, I suppose, a good deal over the world; and, I dare say, you have met, in the mail, on the railroad, or in the omnibus, with people, who, with the most offensive obstinacy, insisted upon pulling open the windows of the car, whether there was storm, draught of air, or icy cold. Some persons pay no regard to their travelling companions, even when suffering from rheumatic complaints. You think such a demeanour exceedingly rude; but pray defer a little your hard sentence, at least till you have gone over some more of my letters. It may be that you will obtain from them the conviction that there often occur, in a densely packed assembly, some unknown things sufficiently powerful to affect many persons past endurance, whilst the rest are not in the least aware of them. Do you not remember any friend who cherishes the whim of never consenting to sit down at the table, in the church, in the theatre, or anywhere else, amidst others in a row; who, on the contrary, exerts himself to the utmost, at all such places, to get at the corner seat? Mark him well, he is our very man, and we shall, by and by, be made more intimately acquainted with him. You have, I think, sometimes observed females who, when at church, fall ill. Sometimes they even fall into a swoon, and must be carried out. If you pay attention, you will

learn that fits like these always befall the same persons; they are totally unable to endure sitting in the nave of the church without feeling, sick, being in perfectly good health at other times. Your physician will tell you that you ought to lie on the right side in your bed, in order to sleep well and soundly. But pray ask him, once, for what reason. He will, if honest, keep silence. He does not know the origin of this rule; but be knows, from long experience, that many people while lying on their left side cannot be put to sleep. He has heard this, but he remains unacquainted with the hidden cause of that peculiarity. If you pay a little further attention, you will learn that all people are by no means obliged to lie down on their right side in order to fall asleep, but that many can slumber soundly, even when reposing on the left side: yea that there numbers to whom it seems quite indifferent on which side they rest, and to whom a night passes quietly on their left ear appears as refreshing as one slept on the right. But you will find, in that case, that those who cannot fall asleep except when resting on the right side, will number very few; yet they cling so eagerly to this peculiarity, that they may lie for hours, nay, even during half the night, on the left side, without losing themselves; and yet, as soon as they turn on their couch, they will instantly fall asleep. This is, indeed, an odd thing, but you may observe it anywhere. How many people are there who are unable to eat from a spoon of white copper, argentum, China silver, or any other alloy of silver; whilst some others do not detect any difference for common use from genuine silver! How many people you may meet with who cannot be prevailed upon to take coffee, tea or chocolate, from a brass drinking- cup, or kitchen vessel, which most other persons do not heed at all! How many people bear deep aversion to any warm eatables- especially when much cooked- to fat meat, sweetmeats, &c., preferring cold, simple food, being especially partial to that which is sour! There are amongst these a good many that cherish such a predilection for salads, that they may be heard to say they would rather abstain from all other food than salads. Some others cannot comprehend, the disproportionate delight derived from these things. There are, lastly, some people who cannot bear to have anybody placed behind them. Persons of this description are wont to shrink from any crowd, assembly, or market. Some others are averse to shaking hands, and think it quite intolerable if you should try to keep their hand in yours; for some time they strive to get rid of it and run away. How many are there who cannot brook the heat from an iron stove, though very well enduring that from an earthen one! Shall I enumerate yet more, even hundreds of such idiosyncrasies which are peculiar to certain people? Why, what opinion are you to form about them? Are singularities of this kind only either conceits derived from neglected education, or bad habits caused, perchance, by local interruptions of health? Thus, of course, they would appear to those who are accustomed to look only at the surface of things; and we are indeed often induced by mere appearances to wrong such sensitive persons. If all these strange phenomena should appear isolated, scattered about amongst divers people in different situations, as mere accidental manifestations, we should, perhaps, be justified in undervaluing them. There is, however, a circumstance, not thought worth attending to till now, which represents these things in quite a different light. For, indeed, no one of the peculiarities mentioned above occurs separately, but is everywhere connected with some of the rest. If you would consent to investigate this subject conscientiously, you would meet in one and the same individual with most, even, very often with all of those peculiarities, and never, in any case, will you meet with a single

one only. The foe to yellow shrinks from looking into the glass; the lover of the corner seat pulls open the windows of the omnibus; the sleeper on the right side gets sick in the church, he who dislikes China-silver prefers cold and simple food to fat and sweetmeats, being fond above all of salad, and so on. And thus all oddities of description everywhere appear in the same, person in an uninterrupted line, from the aversion to yellow to the dislike of sugar; from the predilection for blue to the greediness for salad. There is no evident solidarity of all odd characteristics of this kind amongst their bearers; experience at least, exhibits it so everywhere; for whoever possesses one of these oddities participates generally in all. It becomes evident, from the preceding remarks, that all these phenomena are undoubtedly connected with each other; and, should it be so, can only happen from the circumstance that all of them are related to a common principle, to a common, though hidden fountain, from which they alike come forth. As this spring, however, exists only in some individuals, being wanting in all the rest, it becomes altogether evident that there are in this point of view two different species of men,- common people, who do not possess any of these sensibilities, and, on the other hand, people of a peculiar irritability, who may, under the least exposure, be a the way just described. The latter may be properly called Sensitives for they are, indeed, frequently more sensitive than the Mimosa. They are so in their innermost nature, which they are powerless to change, dispense with, or to master, by any effort of their own. People, therefore, are unjust to them, whenever their whims and oddities are mistaken for spontaneous caprice or rudeness. Besides this mistake, sensitive persons have, with their peculiar sensibility, which has been nowhere acknowledged up to the present time, much to undergo in the intercourse of our society, which does not yet make due allowance for those oddities, though they are entitled to a more tender regard than that which has yet been bestowed upon them. Their number is rather large, and you will learn by and by how deeply things are penetrating into human society, of which I have given you in the foregoing remarks only the first notions appearing on the surface. OD. CRYSTALS. DARK ROOM. You have, no doubt, succeeded in descrying, according to the characteristics I gave you the other clay, some amongst your acquaintances belonging to that class of people whom I called Sensitives. Neither is it difficult to meet with them; they exist in considerable numbers everywhere; and, if there should not be at your command any healthy person of this description, then look only for those who are troubled when sleeping, throwing off in sleep their coverlet, speaking when dreaming, or who are apt to start up; or those who suffer much from passing headache, from stomach ache, complaining frequently of nervous indispositions, disliking large companies, preferring to be only with a few friends, or even seeking total seclusion. With a very few exceptions, all these people are of a more or less sensitive disposition. But all these things are only the trite portions of the subject in question; put to the scientific touchstone, there appear phenomena and manifestations of a quite different importance.

Provide yourself with a natural crystal, at; large as you have at hand, either a spar of gypsum a heavy spar, or a Gotthard mountain crystal of a foot in length; put it horizontally over the corner of a table or the back of a chair, so that both ends of it project. This done, lead a sensitive friend near it, and direct him to approach the palm of his left hand to the ends of the crystal, at a distance of six, four, or three inches. Your sensitive friend, before half a minute has passed, will tell you that from the end of the upper point came forth towards his hand a cooling breath, and, from the opposite end, the lower surface of the crystal, by which it was originally attached to the ground,- something lukewarm touched his hand. He will find the cooling breath to be pleasant and refreshing; the lukewarm, on the contrary, as it were, accompanied by a loathsome and almost nauseous sensation, which, even if continued only a short time, will prove intolerably affecting and exhausting to the whole arm. When I observed this manifestation for the first time, it seemed to me both new and enigmatical; nobody would believe it. I have since repeated the experiment with hundreds of sensitive persons at Vienna, with the same results. It was proved by experiments in England, Scotland and France; and anybody may try it for himself, for there are all over the world plenty of sensitive persons. Whenever one of these persons places his left hand near some other points of the crystal, to wit, to any corner of either side, he will feel, indeed, now lukewarm, then cool fits, but every time incomparably fainter ones than on either of the points at the opposite poles. As these contrary sensations were produced, without the crystals having been touched, at a distance of some inches, yea, with very sensitive persons, at the distance of some feet, I thought it evident that something was pouring forth from these, as it were, half-organised minerals, that the science of physics has not yet explored, and which, though we are unable to perceive it by the eye, proves its existence by material effects. As Sensitives are enabled to act through feeling, in so extraordinary a way more than the rest of mankind, the thought struck me whether they could not, also, surpass our faculties in regard to the sense of sight; whether they, perhaps, would not be able to perceive, in deep darkness anything of these strange emanations from crystals! In order to sift this problem thoroughly, I took, in a dark night of 1844, a huge mountain crystal to a highly sensitive lady, Miss Angelica Starman, whose physician, Prof Lippich, a celebrated pathologist, was present. We brought about complete darkness in two rooms, in one of which I placed my crystal, on a spot unknown to any one present except myself. After a short stay in the first room, in order previously to accustom the eyes of the Sensitive to the darkness, we led the lady into the where the crystal was laid down. After a very short time she denoted the place in which it had been put. She told us that its whole body glowed throughout with a delicate light, and that its upper point was streaming forth a light as large as a hand, or the palm of a hand, blue in constant motion, sometimes scintillating, of tulip form, dissolving in its upper part into a delicate vapour. When I inverted the crystal, she saw, rising over its other, obtuse end, a dull smoke, of reddish-yellow colour. You may imagine how much I rejoiced in listening to these statements. It is the first experiment (of the many thousands preceding and following it, made with numberless varieties of crystal), which has established beyond cavil the fact, and secured its admission by very many sensitive persons, that the effects upon the sense of feeling, produced by crystals, are accompanied by certain phenomena of light, which follow the former at the same pace, appearing in polar contrast as blue and reddish-yellow, and can be perceived only by sensitive persons.

If you should wish to repeat the experiments just described, I feel obliged to direct your attention to the circumstance that you cannot reckon on any success in them but in absolute darkness. The light adhering to the crystal, is of so faint and delicate a description, that even the slightest trace of any other light, penetrating by accident into the dark room, would be sufficient to blind the sensitive observer, that is, to impair, momentarily, his sensitive faculty for such exceedingly delicate light. There are, besides, but few persons of so high a sensitiveness as the lady mentioned above, who was enabled to perceive that tender light after so short a stay in the dark room, With persons of moderate sensitiveness there was required, in most cases, a stay of one or even two hours in the dark in order to free their eyes sufficiently from the over-irritation of day, or lamp-light, and to prepare them completely for the perception of crystal light. Nay, there have occurred to my experience some cases, where persons of faint sensitive predisposition did not perceive anything even in the third hour, but succeeded, nevertheless, in the fourth, in perceiving the lustre of the crystal, and were thus convinced of the reality of this phenomenon. Well, you are now eager to learn what the fact concerning it actually is, or to what department of either physiology or physics these manifestations are to be referred, according to both their subjective and objective condition. They are not heat, though they produce sensations resembling those of cool and lukewarm; for there is no conceivable fountain of heat, and, if there were such an one existing, it would be perceived not only by sensitive, but, also by non-sensitive persons; or, at least, by a delicate thermoscope. They are not electricity, for there is no inducement for the everlasting current that streams forth in that case; no electroscope is affected by it, nor is conduction according to the laws of electricity, of any effect. Neither can it be magnetism nor diamagnetism, because crystals are not magnetic, and diamagnetism does not operate in any crystal in the same way, but in a different and contrary one, and the latter is ever the case in the phenomena spoken of. Neither could it be common light, for the reason that, though this phenomenon is accompanied by light, mere light does not produce anywhere at the same time both lukewarm and cool sensations. Why, what are, then, actually, these effects above described? If you should press me for an answer, I should feel obliged to avow that I do not know myself. I mark the manifestations of a dynamid, which I am unable to record amongst any of the known ones. If I am not mistaken in judging about the facts proved by experiments, this phenomenon is to be placed between magnetism, electricity and heat, but it ought not to be identified with either of them: and, thus embarrassed, I have chosen to designate it by the word Od, the etymology of which. I shall expound in another place. THE SUN. THE MOON. THE IRIS You already know the "Sensitives," and you are acquainted with the element they move in, that is, the dynamic expressed by the word Od. We did not, however, in that way, touch anything more than one corner of the hem of the immense drapery in which Nature has thus wrapt itself. This remarkable force does not spring forth alone from the poles of crystals, it is emerging also from numerous other fountains in the universe, as strongly as in the case last mentioned, even more so sometimes. In the next place I shall direct your attention to the stars, and, above all, to the sun. Place one of your sensitive friends in the shade; put in his left hand a common empty barometer tube, or other tube of glass, or only a wooden stick, and cause him to stretch it into the sunshine, whilst both person and hand remain in the shade Very soon you will hear something of this simple experiment that may strike your mind. You will, of course, expect that the experimenting person will feel the stick waxing warm; for

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sunshine cannot but warm it. But you will learn quite the reverse; the sensitive hand will become sensible of divers sensations, but their result will be coolness. As soon as the stick is drawn back into the shade, coolness will cease, and the experimenter will feel it growing; warm; when brought once more into the sunshine, it will become cool again, the experimenter being thus able accurately to control his own sensations. It is evident, therefore, that there are circumstances most simple, though unknown down to the present time, under the prevalence of which the direct ray of the sun does not produce the effect of warmth, but, on the contrary, in a very unforeseen and strange manner, an impression of cold. Moreover the Sensitives will tell you that the coolness manifested in this case agrees perfectly with that produced on the upper end of the mountain crystal. Whereas, that coolness however, should it be of the condition of Od, would, of course, manifest itself in some way, as a phenomenon of light in the dark. Neither will you fail in producing it, if you will repeat my experiment, as follows: I conducted a copper wire from an illuminated room into my dark room, and then carried the exterior end of it into the sunshine. A very short time afterwards the part of the wire left in the dark began to grow luminous, and on its end arose a small phenomenon, flame-like as big as a finger. The sunbeam, consequently, poured into the wire in this way, the substance of Od, which was seen by the Sensitives in the darkness radiating in the form of light. But let us go on a step further. Let the sunbeam fall upon a good prism of glass and cause it to reflect the colours of the rainbow on an opposite wall. Have your sensitive performer, with the glass rod in his left hand, try the colours one by one. When the experimenter shall hold it out in a way to intercept only the blue or violet colour, his sensations will be exceedingly pleasant and cool; far more pleasant and cooler than that produced by the whole sunbeam. When, on the contrary, he places it in the yellow or rather in the red light, the pleasant coolness will instantly cease, and instead of it, a warmth ensue and a loathsome tepidity, which would in a very short time tire the whole arm. You may likewise, cause your sensitive to hold out his naked finger, instead of the intermediate pole, into the colours; the effect will be the same. I preferred, at the first experiment, to use only the rod, in order to exclude, by a poor conductor of heat, any coeffect on the hand of the actual warm rays. These effects of the analysed sunlight will be proved to be exactly the same as those streaming forth from the poles of crystals. You may infer, from these facts, that Od of both effects is contained in the sunbeam; it is pouring forth at every moment in immeasurable quantity, from our sun, together with and heat, and thus exhibits a new and powerful agency in it, the distance of whose effects we are as yet unable to appreciate or calculate. Well, I shall now venture to request you to look back once more upon the foes of yellow and the admirers of blue in my first letter. Did we not learn that the pole of the crystal, which was breathing forth pleasant coolness, emitted altogether blue light- and, do we not see here in quite a different way, the sunlight, by its blue beam, also emitting a coolness exceedingly refreshing? On the other side did not the reddish light of the opposite pole on the crystal and likewise. both the yellow and the red of sunlight, produce lukewarm impressions on sensitive persons You will be aware that in both these cases, so much differing from each other, the blue was followed every time by very pleasant, the yellow-reddish by equally uncomfortable sensual impressions. We have therefore, here the first hint, that may caution you against a hasty sentence upon the supposed caprices of sensitive persons. You will allow that indeed in both the yellow and blue there may be hidden something more than a mere optical effect upon the retina of the human eye- that an instinct rooted more deeply for some delicate and unknown purpose is here ruling the feelings and of consequence the judgement of Sensitives and, lastly that this phenomenon may be worth the most careful attention.

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But, even without referring to colours, I shall suggest to you another easy experiment, in order to discern the standard of Od in the sunbeams. I have tried it myself many times. Pray, polarise them in the usual way, by causing them to fall under an angle of 35 25' on a package of a dozen panes of glass. Then have your sensitive friend hold the rod in his left hand, alternately in both the reflected and the transmitted light. You will be told, every time, that the former conveys, by way of the rod, to the hand in contact, the coolness of the Od; the latter, on the contrary, the loathsome lukewarmness of it. When you are in the humour, you may avail yourselves of this peculiarity to banter the chemists. Take, for that purpose, two tumblers filled with water, placing the one in the reflected sunlight and the other in the transmitted rays. After a delay of six to eight minutes let it be tasted by a sensitive man or woman. They will tell you, instantly, that the water placed in the reflected light tastes cool and sour; that in the opposite light, lukewarm and, as it were, bitter. Once more; place a small glass vessel, filled with water, in the blue light of the rainbow, and another of the same size in the yellow ray; or place the first on the pointed edge of a large mountain crystal, and the other on its obtuse lower corner. In any of these cases you may be assured that the sensitive will feel the water from the blue light to be delightful, delicate, acid-like; that from the reddish-yellow, on the contrary, nauseous, bitter and harsh. He will, if permitted, empty the former with high delight; but, if you should prevail upon him to drink the latter, it may happen as has chanced to me, that is, that the, sensitive may shortly afterwards vomit vehemently. Then hand the water over to the gentlemen of the chemical profession, and let them analyse from out it the "amarum" and the "acidum", that is, its bitter and its sour constituents! Operate with the moonlight in the same way as you did with the sunlight. You will obtain similar, though partly contrary results. A glass rod held out by a sensitive experimenter with his left hand, into full, serene moonlight, will impart to him, not coolness, but lukewarm. A glass of water, placed for some time in the moonlight, will taste more lukewarm arm and loathsome than another which was left meantime in the shade. Everybody knows what great influence the moon exercises upon some people; all persons affected by her being, without any exception, Sensitives, and, indeed, generally of peculiar sensitiveness. And, as she does evidently exercise some effects of Od and her influence upon lunatics is in accordance with those effects, which may be produced also by other sources of Od, she is, as an Od-producing constellation, of great importance to us. There is, radiating from the light of both in sun and moon, a powerful substance of Od, in such abundance that we may easily intercept and manage it for simple experiments. How immense its influence proves to be upon all mankind and, in consequence, upon the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms, you will learn, by and by, from many evidences. The Od is, after all, a cosmic dynamid, emitting rays from star to star, like light and heat, embracing the universe. MAGNETISM These essays are called "odic-magnetic letters" Now why magnetic? You will ask, what is there of magnetism in them? I feel obliged to answer to your question- very little, or nothing at all. But, as people are wont to call a number of manifestations (referring to our subject) magnetic, I feel obliged to submit, for the moment, to this nomenclature. The cause of this custom is to be found in the circumstance that magnetism is carrying along with itself

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some faculties of Od, as the light of both the sun and moon has similar ones in its suite, as the same spring forth. from crystal poles, and from numerous fountains besides, which have not the slightest connection with magnetism, in so far, at least, as we have understood this latter power of nature up to the present time. Let us then, investigate a little further the mutual relations between Od and magnetism. Place a powerful loadstone obliquely over the edge of a board, so that both ends of it may project, in the same way as you did with the large crystal; arrange the board or table in such a manner that the loadstone may be placed in the meridian, to wit, the north pole of the needle of the compass toward the north, and its south pole toward the south; then direct your sensitive friend to place himself in front of the magnet, bringing his left hand slowly towards it at a distance of from six to four inches. After having complied with your orders, he will give you the same information which you got from him when touching the crystals; namely, that the northward pole exhales a cooling breath to the hand, the south pole, on the contrary, a lukewarm, loathsome air. You may then place again, on each of the poles, a glass of water, and, after six to eight minutes, cause the sensitive to taste either of them. He will declare the glass placed northward to be fresh and coal; that on the southward pole, on the contrary, lukewarm and disgusting; and if you wish once more to vex the necromancers of chemistry, they will get angry and in order to escape from this perplexity, will deny the whole fact, though evident as the sunlight, affirming it to be not true. You may smile at the weak side exposed in this case by the learned men of the cathedra, for the great truths of nature cannot be converted into untruth by mere negation without proof. These gentlemen may be compelled before long, to modify their opinion thereabout. You will, no doubt, think it self evident that the suppositions that led me into the dark with crystals, would work upon my mind also in regard to the effects of magnet. The first experiment on this matter I arranged with Miss Mary Nowotny at Vienna, April, 1844, and have repeated it many hundred times since in the dark room, with divers Sensitives. I rejoiced in seeing my suppositions justified to my satisfaction when the lady declared that on either end of the magnet there was a burning flame fiery and glaring smoking and spark- on the northward pole blue, on the southward, yellow-reddish. But pray, try the easy experiment yourself, only modifying it by placing the loadstone vertically, the southward pole upward, and you will be told that the flame springing forth from the pole will increase. If the magnet were sufficiently powerful, it would be seen rising up to the ceiling of the room; yea, it would even produce on the ceiling an illuminated oval circle, of one to three feet in diameter, so bright that, if the observer be sufficiently sensitive, he might describe to you the paintings he sees there. But I must caution you against omitting any precautions for getting absolute darkness, and for accustoming the eyes of the performer to the latter for some hours; otherwise your observer could see nothing. You would operate in vain, and the truthfulness of my statements would run the risk of being suspected, undeservedly. This bright phenomenon would appear more beautiful, if you would apply to the experiment a horse-shoe magnet, placing the latter with both of its poles upward. I operated with one of this description, of a hundred weight power. All Sensitives attending the experiment saw streaming forth from either of its poles a delicate light, to wit, two beside one another, which neither attracted, nor overpowered, nor influenced each other, as the magnetic powers of opposite poles do, but which quietly, side by side, sprang upward, filled with numberless small spots white-hot shining and forming altogether a column of light as big as a man, which by all who saw it, was described as exceedingly beautiful and delightful. It arose vertically to the ceiling, forming there an illuminated circular plane about six feet in diameter.

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When the experiment was continued for a considerable time, the whole ceiling of the room grew by degree, visible. Whenever a magnet of this description is placed on a table the flame it exhales illuminates its surface entirely and even the objects upon it as far as a yard's distance from its surface. When a hand is put into it, a shadow is seen; when, on the contrary a flat body, as a small board, a pane of glass or a sheet of metal, is brought horizontally into this flame like phenomenon, the latter is seen curving around those materials, running along beneath them like common fire around a pan or pot. Whenever any one blows or puffs into it, it begins to flare as if it were a lighted candle. Whenever a draught of air sets in, or the magnet itself moved, it stoops sideways in the direction or the current of air, like a torch when moved. When a burning-glass is brought near it, light may be gathered and concentrated into a focus. The manifestation is for that reason very material, possessing many of its attributes in common with the usual flame. When two of them are brought together so as to meet each other crosswise they do not disturb one another by any attractions or repulsions, but will penetrate one another each proceeding undisturbed on its own way. Whenever one of them proves to be stronger, as it were fitted out with a stronger faculty of propelling, it will pierce its inferior, cleaving it so that the latter will pass on both sides around it. A similar effect takes place when a rod is held in it; it will cleave the flame, and the latter will be reunited behind it. Well, as crystals may be seen by any sensitive person, in a delicate lustre that penetrates their whole substance, so the same persons will perceive, likewise, the steel of the magnet glowing throughout in a sort of whitefire. In the same manner do the electromagnets manifest themselves*. *These phenomena of light on magnets are treated of more explicitly, accompanied by the necessary proofs in the work Untersuchungen ueber die Dynamide des Magnetismus der Electricitaet, der Waerme, des Lichts etc., in ihren Beziehungen zur Lebenskraft, von Freiherrn V. Reichenbach, Braunschweig, Vieweg, 1860. There is no parallelism whatever between the attributes just enumerated, and those of magnetism, the former being exclusively those of Od. If you would compare a spar of gypsum with a loadstone, you would perceive the emanations of Od from the homonymous poles, of both the former and the latter, as well in respect to the effect upon sensation as to that oh sight, to be not substantially different, crystals being perhaps a little superior to magnets in regard to the power of Od, their coolness or warmth being more clearly defined, their faculty of light more powerful; but the crystal wants magnetism. You have therefore, in that instance side by side both Od joined to magnetism and Od without any magnetism, in each both of them being of the same power It cannot, therefore, by any means be asserted that Od is a gift to magnetism, nor even only one of the attributes of magnetism, nor magnetism itself. The Od appears in crystals totally separated from any magnetism whatever, and I shall by and by enumerate to you a good many more instances as striking as those given above, in which Od of the strongest power occurs; not the slightest trace of magnetism in the usual sense of the word, being present. Od, therefore, is to be considered as an independent dynamic, which exhibits itself in the suite of magnetism, as well as in crystals, in the sunbeams, and many manifestations of nature beside, whereof we shall treat further in another place. We know the great points of similarity between magnetism and electricity. We are aware that the former appears in the train of the latter, and vice versa so that we are prone to identify them. Light and heat act in a similar way; the one produces the other; each changing at every moment from itself into the other. We are unable, nevertheless, to designate,

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anywhere, the common point of issue from which both of them must be derived. The same is the case in respect to Od. We are, therefore, obliged to guess that these dynamic phenomena must, in the last instance, come forth from a common source; but, as long as we shall be unable to prove this identity of origin, so long there is left to us nothing else but to treat of electricity, magnetism light, heat, &c., as of a particular group of phenomena. Whereas, while we comprehend that the numerous manifestations of Od could not be ranked amongst any of the dynamics known to us at present, there is left no chance for us but to gather them separately, forming thus a peculiar group. In the following letters I shall try to prove, beyond any doubt, that the manifestations of this dynamic are not inferior, either as to their compass or their importance, to those which have already obtained, in physical science, the right of naturalisation. ANIMAL MAGNETISM. In our day there is once more a great deal of discussion about an oddity, which was already known eighty years ago, under the name of Animal Magnetism (so called by Mesmer). Our fathers, our grandfathers and our ancestors, disposed of it totally; notwithstanding, it arises constantly anew, and can never die. Why, on what depends so tenacious a life? "Upon falsehood, deception and superstition"; for as such, this topic was treated by a celebrated physiologist in Berlin. We shall see whether they were right who knew no better course than to repeat these words. Let us seize it, at present, without any long preamble, by its horns. Please direct a person of moderate sensitiveness, or of a marked disposition of that kind, to go into the dark; take with you a cat, a bird, a butterfly, if you can obtain one, and a flower-pot, with the flower in blossom. After some hours you will hear strange things. The flowers will emerge from the darkness, becoming visible. At first, they will spring forth from the gloom of universal darkness confusedly, in the form of a grey mist. Afterwards there will he formed in the latter some specks shining more brightly. At last, they will dissolve and expand themselves, the separate flowers becoming discernible, and the forms recognised waxing brighter from moment to moment. When I had led the renowned botanist, Professor Endlicher- who was an individual of moderate sensitiveness- to such a flower-pot, he exclaimed as if terrified, "There is a blue flower, it is a Gloxinia." It was indeed "Gloxinia speciosa var. caerulea" he had seen in absolute darkness, having recognised it both by its form and colour. But without any light there could, of course, be seen nothing at all. There must have existed, therefore, some light to enable him to observe the plant so distinctly as to recognise it not only in respect to its form, but also its colour. Why, whence came this light? It was emanating, actually, from the plant itself, the latter growing luminous. Fruit buds, stamens, pistil, anther, corol, stem, all appeared in a delicate light, even the leaves were to be seen, though in a fainter lustre. Everything became visible in a soft glow, the organs of generation the foremost. the stem brighter than the leaves. Your butterfly, your bird, your cat, all will step forth into visibility, parts of them will grow luminous, and the light will move with them to and fro. But by and by you will hear your sensitive friend stating that he has a sight of yourself. The first time you will seem to him like a shapeless man of snow; then, like a man in armour, having on his head a high helmet; at last, like a giant, awfully gleaming. Then cause the sensitive to direct his looks to his own form. Somewhat perplexed, he will perceive himself emitting light even through his clothes; not only his arms but also his feet, his legs, chest, trunk, the whole will be seen in a gentle glow. Direct his attention to the hands. In the beginning they will resemble a grey vapour, then they will assume the aspect of a profile on a faintly lighted ground; at last, the fingers will appear in their own light, being

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seen as they appear when you place your hand near the flame of a candle, that is, transparent. The hand will seem to have grown longer than it actually is; from the tip of each finger will appear, as it were, a luminous continuation that will measure, according to circumstances, half or even quite a finger's length. The hand will thus seem to be increased in size by its whole length, by the burning tail that appears on every finger. The upper joints of the fingers will shine the brightest; the roots of the nails even outshining the latter. When the astonishment caused by this self illuminating faculty of man, unknown down to our days, shall have subsided, and you desire to ask for your colour, then you will, perhaps, wonder again at being told that it is different on different parts of your body, the right hand shining in a bluish light, whilst the left appears in a light of yellow-reddish colour; the former, of course, appearing more obscure, the latter more luminous; that the same difference is to be seen as to both your legs; that even the whole right side of your face is more dull, more bluish than the left; nay, that the whole right part of your body seems to be bluish and a little more obscure; the left, on the contrary exhibits itself of a yellow-reddish colour, and perceptibly brighter than the former. It will then instantly rush to your mind, that you here meet again with the same contrast of colours (to wit, of blue and reddish-yellow) which you have met with in the light of the crystals, in the sunshine, and in the flames of the magnets. Now, may not the parallelism, which every time grew manifest between the blue and cool light of Od, as well as between the yellow-reddish and lukewarm, be found and proved to exist also in respect to the self-illuminating faculty of man? You deem this to be problematical; and, indeed, the nature of this attribute of the human body would be left enigmatical, unless such a fact could be proved. I have tried (August, 1844) the following experiment with Mr Bollman, a joiner, fifty years of age, and of moderate sensitiveness. I put his left hand in my right, in such a way that the fingers of each of us interlaced those of the other, but did not touch one another. After a minute I replaced the fingers of my right by those of my left hand. Thus I changed hands several times, and learned therefrom that the man felt my right blue-shining hand, to be cooler than my left yellow-shining hand, the latter waxing far warmer. The evidence looked for was found. I repeated the experiment afterwards with many hundreds of sensitive persons, when it was verified by the same result Then I extended it, in numberless variations, to other parts of the body, as feet, cheeks, ears, eyes, nostrils nay, even to the halves of the tongue; but in all of these cases I got but one and the same result, namely, that the whole right side of anybody, whether male or female, is observed by sensitive persons to be cooler; the whole left side, on the contrary, to be warmer. Well, you will comprehend, from these facts, that man is polarised from his right to the left exactly as any crystal between the poles of its great axis, as the magnet between its northward and southward pole, as the sunlight between blue and yellow. As, however; the effects with their characteristics are the same, we feel justified in concluding that the causes also are the same that is, that man, too, is, or develops, Od, and precisely of the two different forms which have been observed in other sources of Od. I examined for the purpose of evidence, cats, chickens, ducks, dogs, horses, cattle; all of which were found to be of the same condition. Plants which I caused to be investigated proved to be subjected to the same law, from their root up to their leaves. All the universe, therefore, the whole organic, living nature, is luminous and abounding in supplies of the dynamid of Od, streaming forth and pervading it; and, if you will look over this vast fact with its immense extent of meaning through all the universe, then will dawn upon you a new light on that subject, a small fragment of which has been both improperly and incorrectly called, down to our days, animal magnetism. After having handed to you, in the outset the key of entrance into this intricate maze, I shall try with the lamp of theory in hand, to pass speedily through it in your company.

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MAN, THE BEARER OF OD Whenever I took a sensitive left hand in my right one, you saw that there was produced a sensation of pleasant coolness; but whenever I did the same with my left hand, a loathsome warmth a lukewarm feeling, took place. This may be inverted. A left hand may be laid into a sensitive right one; in this case the sensation will be one of pleasant coolness. Tried on the right hand, there will follow a nauseous sensation. The law is before us: odic homologous joining of hands (left with left, or right with right) are lukewarm and loathsome; odic joining of the opposite poles (left with right, or right with left) are cool and pleasant. Now recall the remark in my first letter, that there are people whom it affects uncomfortably whenever anybody shakes hands with them, and who break off rather vehemently when any one tries to clench their offered hand. It is, however, the custom to shake the right hand. In this case, therefore, a homonymous coupling of hands takes place, being lukewarm and loathsome, very soon growing painful, and by and by intolerable to the sensitive person; and thus they strive to get rid of it by detaching themselves from it, violently if necessary. Go on a step further: put your right fingers on the left arm of a sensitive individual. on his shoulder, under the shoulder, on the temples, on the thigh, on the knee, the foot, the toes, anywhere on the left side of the whole sensitive body; your right lingers will be felt cool and pleasant; all these touchings being, of course, a contact of a heteronymous description. Do the same on the right side of the sensitive with your left fingers, and you will produce the same sensation of coolness; these touchings being likewise a heteronymous contact. If you should apply, on the contrary, all these touchings to the left side of the sensitive, by your left fingers, or vice versa, on the right side by your right fingers, all would be felt contrarily, that is, lukewarm and unpleasant; the latter contacts being only homonymous. Put my statements to the test, choosing for that purpose another contact of common life. Place yourself beside a sensitive person as near as soldiers stand when mustered in file; your whole right side will, in this case touch the whole left side of the sensitive; there will not be any utterance of displeasure. But, pray turn round at your place, so that your left side comes in contact with the left of your sensitive neighbour; he will then instantly give vent to his complaint of a lukewarm uneasiness, and he will, unless you should shift to your former place, find it intolerable, and step back. In the former case the contact was homonymous, in the latter heteronymous. Choose another relation. Take your place immediately in the rear of your sensitive friend, your front facing his back; or in the same manner before him, your back fronting his face; in either case your right side will be placed next to his right, and, at the same time, your left to his left. Both are, however, homonymous connections; the Sensitive will not bear with it, and he will leave you instantly unless you change your position. Here, I feel obliged to refer once more to a passage in my first letter, where I directed your attention to the existence of people who cannot endure that any one should take his place near them, neither in their rear nor immediately before them; from that very instinct shunning every crowd and every market-place. You will comprehend by what strong impulse these people are induced to do so. I know some stout and lively young men who dislike riding on horseback. This seems, at first sight, quite contrary to a manly disposition; for the exercise on horseback and the management of the horse are certainly a high delight to the strength of youth. But, on horseback, the rider is obliged to turn to the animal his homonymous sides. The case is nearly the same as that mentioned above, when a sensitive feels immediately before him the back of

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another. All male persons, in whom I have met with this disgust of riding on horseback, were Sensitives. As an instance I may name the Barons Auguste and Henry Oberlaender. There are, likewise, females that cannot endure carrying a child on their back, not even for a few minutes, in mere sport. This case resembles the one just mentioned; it agrees with those where sensitive individuals feel another in their rear. Such These females are always Sensitives. There are many people who cannot sleep in the same bed with another. These "mauvais coucheurs" are proverbial. The reason is evident from the preceding arguments But even the general custom of all civilised nations, namely, to give the right side to persons superior to one's self, by placing one's self on them left, sitting down on their left or guiding them by their left arm has its deep motive in the relation of our condition to Od. This custom indeed is said to be introduced in order to leave free to the privileged person the motion of his right hand. This reason may have had its share in the introduction of the custom mentioned, but the influence of sensitiveness thereupon has been probably of far greater importance. When two persons are placed sideways near one another, they are mutually loading one another with their Od; he on the right side receives a load of negative Od from him on the left; the latter a load of positive Od from the former. The right one obtains, therefore, as much of negativeness as the left one loses of it; the left, on the other side, gains as much of positiveness as the right one loads upon him. But the peculiar effect of the stronger negativeness of Od is, as you know, cooler and more pleasant; that of the stronger positiveness more lukewarm and disagreeable. The female, therefore, whom you place on your right side, obtains as much of pleasure as the male on her left of uneasiness. The key to this immemorial habit is not, therefore, to be looked for in custom alone, but it corresponds with something; in the inmost recesses of our nature. This goes so far, that people of rather strong sensitiveness cannot stay at all on the left side of any one. Numberless cases like these occur in human life in a thousand connections and modifications; all of which may be explained and determined according to the law just developed. But everybody may infer, from these facts, how very often the pretensions of sensitive persons and their claims upon regard and forbearance might be justified. MESMERISM. THE MAGNETIC PASS AND MEDICAL MEN. You perchance, ask me what we se, of the so-called magnetisation of a person regarded from our point of view, since you may consider this subject as the very hinge on which my letters are turning. This is, however by no means the case, though it may be a very remarkable part of the manifestations of Od. It has obtained a practical importance rather extensive, having produced the so-called Mesmerism, that is, a certain method of curing introduced into the medical art by Dr. Mesmer, he availing himself of the dynamic of Od as a remedy in some diseases. Mesmer thought it, according to the condition of the natural sciences in his age, to be magnetism, calling it Animal Magnetism. Neither of the appellations, Od or Mesmerism, will, by any means, interfere with the other. The former belongs to the department of Physics, and designates a cosmic power; the, latter refers to a special application of this power in Therapeutics, and belongs to the medical science. Let us here recur to the fifth of these letters, where I invited you to pass with me through the mazes of the so-called "Animal Magnetism," the lamp of theory, just acquired, in our hand. You know that, wherever you touch with your fingers a sensitive person in the dark, an impression, both sensible and visible, is produced upon him. It is, however, scarcely

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necessary, that any contact should actually take place; the mere approximation of your fingers produces a considerable effect. The emanation, which in the dark extends visibly to a considerable distance beyond your fingers, immediately reaches the body to which they draw near, exercising some influence upon it. You may produce some rather powerful irritations, even at a distance of one or more feet, which may be on persons of only moderate sensitiveness. With persons of high sensibility, however, this reaches as far as across the room; and there have occurred to me many cases where the effect was distinctly visible at the surprising distance of twenty or thirty paces, and even more. Thus far we have treated only of stationary touchings, contact without motion. But, at present I shall invite you to move along with the points of your fingers, or with the pole of a crystal, or with a magnet, from one point of the body of a sensitive person to another. Approach, for example, the points of your right fingers to the left shoulder of your sensitive friend, passing them softly and slowly as far down as the joint of the elbow, or down the whole arm, extending even beyond the fingers. As before, by stationary contacts, you now will produce, by such touching, a certain impression moving downward along the whole line, producing a cool pass that may be considered as a chain of numberless links waxing cool. Medical men call this phenomenon, the 'Pass'. Do the same on some other points, for instance, over the left side of the head, down the left side of the body, and the left foot, even beyond the toes, and you will produce all along the same cool sensation. When you operate in the same way with your left hand down the right side, you will produce the same effect as before; both being heteronymous contacts. When, at length, you choose to apply both hands together to this experiment, carrying on both passes above mentioned, over the sensitive person, from top to toe, the whole person thus passed over will be pervaded with a pleasant sensation of coolness and quietness. Now, what you have just done is nothing but what the disciples of Mesmer, and all of the so-called magnetic physicians, denominate the animal magnetic or mesmeric pass. Thus, you, too, are now able to magnetise. For this purpose, you must understand it is quite indifferent whether you apply the pass with your band, or with the poles of crystals or magnets, whether you exercise it immediately on the naked skin or over the clothes, either at a distance of half a span or of an ell or more; the effect will be each time the same in kind, only decreasing in power in proportion to the increased distance. The influence produced by extraneous heteronymous emanations of Od upon the condition of a sensitive person, forms the substance of the so-called 'Magnetisation'. Whenever you operate in the dark, the Sensitives will perceive the burning ends of the fingers or poles passing down over them; they will see, moreover, on those points of their body touched momentarily by the flames of Od, a mark more luminous than the rest running with the engendering principle of light. From this phenomenon of light, as well as from the effect of a cool sensation, you may infer, conclusively, that the magnetising person exercises upon the person magnetised, a charm which may be regarded as of great importance; that Od, which is emanating with blue light, exercises an influence particularly exciting upon the bearers of Od with red light, that is, heteronymous upon heteronymous And, whereas, the human body proves to be a strong bearer of Od, the substance of the latter partaking strongly of the inmost being of the former, it becomes evident that magnetic passes of this description may penetrate deeply into both the physical and mental economy of man. Excitation of sleep, or restlessness; an influence (either useful or injurious) upon morbid interruptions in the body; impressions by "applying the hands upon the body, passing over it," etc., are, therefore, by no means " a pitiable error, full of deception and superstition, as people in some places

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have thought themselves justified in asserting- but physiological facts, based upon the laws of nature, and proved by experience. Only those who will never take pains to examine into these facts, can indulge in the utterance of such a premature judgment. When, however, you ask me for the actual profit that medical art draws from these magnetic proceedings, I venture to say, from conviction that it may become immensely great as soon as the physical and physiological theory of the Od shall be perfectly expounded and developed; but that, at present, it seems to me rather limited and problematical. When listento the magnetisers, or reading their reports one might, indeed, be tempted to think them able now, as Mesmer thought himself eighty years ago, to cure by that method any disease whatever. Every physician, to whatever school he may belong, is wont to imagine, when his patient has recovered, that his art teas cured him. Why should not a magnetic practitioner cherish the same self-conceit? We, and other people, are fully aware that, amongst twenty convalescents, nineteen recover by themselves and very often in spite of the art of the medical man. I have myself, notwithstanding ascertained thus much, that on whatever part of the human body a is laid or moved according to heteronymous connection of Od, there takes place an enhancement of the activity of vital force; and, indeed, no superficial one, but such as to force its effects very rapidly even to the innermost organs. Whenever, therefore, a local exhaustion is manifested, some revival and an increased activity may be produced. This is a general result, great and ample, which intelligent practitioners will know how to estimate. I consider the influence of Od, especially upon convulsions, as being established by evidence. I have, myself, in numberless cases, assuaged or produced arbitrarily, in this way, complaints of this description. But whenever I have observed physicians operating at a sick-bed, I have seen them, with very few exceptions, exhibiting such foolish tricks, that any final result beneficial to the patient must prove next to impossible. Without a knowledge of both the real condition of Od and the laws belonging to a power so complicated, what solid result could reasonably be expected to be obtained hitherto by groping blindly along through the darkness? But we may hope that our medical men, as soon as the nature of Od and its complications with the faculties of the living organism, shall be recognised, and scientifically developed by profound researches, will also begin to introduce, in place of the present rambling, harum-scarum practice, a more rational system of procedure, in order to bring under strict laws the effects of Od upon the morbid human body; and thus draw from these extraordinary manifestations some certain benefit for mankind, which they have long since desired from this source. CHEMISM. I showed the other day, what is by animal magnetism. It is no magnetic effect upon the human body, but the effect of Od, which may be exercised upon as well (and sometimes with stronger results) by numerous other sources of Od as by the magnet; the latter operating in such cases as an accidental vehicle of Od, but never in its condition as a magnet. Therefore, let us drop the phrase, "animal magnetism," as obsolete. It is derived from a period when people used to form the dullest and most confused notions about such things; and it disagrees with the present state of theoretical illustration of the subject in question. Before, however, leading you further toward the bottom of the subject, I feel obliged to make you more acquainted with the extension of Od in nature. You know this dynamic that pours forth in an everlasting and unalterable current from an unknown fountain by the poles of crystals. You know, further one that is emanating from a

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source lessening by degrees, and at last dried up, namely, from steel magnets. You know, finally, an Od that is springing forth from well transient though living, that is, from organic life. Well, I am about to lead you now to an Od that sparkles forth for a little moment, and then speedily dies away; it is that produced by chemical process. I say, considerately, by Chemism, as it is well to distinguish between it and affinity; the former designating chemical force. Uncork a bottle of champagne in the dark, before the eyes of a sensitive bystander; he will shout with delight at the flash of fire that will follow the cork. as it flies up to the ceiling of the room. Then, the whole bottle will appear in a white glow, as if it were a mass of glittering, snow, and a bright, undulating cloud will be seen playing, over it. Though you do not perceive anything of this splendid firework, you are nevertheless aware that it is a manifestation of Od, and if you wish to comprehend it, then attend to some of my experiments. Pour, in the dark, a spoonful of finely ground sugar, or kitchen salt dried on a metal pan, into a glass of water. The sensitive person, at first, sees little or nothing of these things; as soon as you stir them up, he will immediately see the water turning into light. When holding it in his left hand, he will feel it growing rather cold. Thus even the simple solution is developing Od; it is, therefore, a source of Od. Place a wire of copper or zinc in a glass filled with diluted sulphuric acid. The whole wire will show a kind of glowing fire, and there will appear, quickly rising from its upper end, a manifestation of light, in shape rather resembling the flame of a common candle, only of far more feeble brilliancy. In its uppermost part it will turn into a vapour, with many delicate sparkles rising vertically, the wire feeling to the left hand of the sensitive far colder than before. The dissolution is, therefore, likewise, a source of Od. Prepare an acid water from a Seiditz powder. First, dissolve, in the dark, bicarbonate of soda in half a glass of water; it will immediately become luminous; in another half glass of water, dissolve tartaric acid; it will likewise grow lustrous, and, indeed, more intensely so than the former. When, after some minutes, both of them have returned to their former condition, pour them together. The mixture, will exhibit, in a moment, a brightly shining appearance. feeling to the left hand as cold as ice, and there will be piled up over the glass a cloud of whitish lustre. Chemical decomposition is also, therefore, developing, and rather vehemently too, abundance of Od. Prepare a solution of sugar of lead, and pour into it a solution of alum; the whole fluid will be instantly visible in the dark. Conduct both polar wires of a voltaic apparatus into water; as soon as decomposition commences your sensitive friend will see the water shining and increasing in brightness; the vessel, on the contrary, touched with his left hand, will feel cold. Every chemical process, therefore, is developing Od. Chemical action is a vehement source of Od, suddenly springing forth, but drying up as soon as the play of the affinities subsides. When a bottle of alcohol, or rather ether, sulphuretted carbonic gas, or caustic ammonia, is uncorked in the dark, the air continuing perfectly quiet by keeping off any breath, then your sensitive will see arising perpendicularly from the mouth of the bottle a bright column; and, indeed, the sooner in proportion to the expansive faculty of the fluid. But not only matter, the evaporation of which is as quick as that of the chemical preparations just mentioned? but some other bodies also, like quicksilver, of a very slight power of evaporation, push forth from the mouth of the bottle a bright vapour. Solid materials act in the same way, especially such as iodine which drives forth a smoke brightly shining. and becomes luminous itself. Evaporation, and of consequence distillation, too, are going on under constant development of Od. Every fermenting fluid of sugar continues luminous, bubbles of air arising from it like glowing pearls. Must of wine in fermentation is such a fluid of chemical action as is constantly luminous. You may now explain to yourselves, without any assistance, the turning

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of your champagne into fire and flame. But decay, also, is a process of fermentation. Whatever is rotting becomes, of course, lustrous. This fact we knew, indeed, a long time since, from the doctrine of phosphorescence; but we have not yet expounded the near relation of the light of Od to the latter. If nonsensitive persons, like ourselves, do not perceive any trace of phosphorescence on decaying matter, the latter is seen, nevertheless by Sensitives in a full blaze of light. Well, as we are treating just now on decay, there is no great distance hence to the dead. Will you accompany me, for a moment, to the realms of the dead, in order that you may come back, if you will believe me, enriched by an instructive glance at their nightly revelries? Do not you know that the souls of the deceased continue, for some time, hovering about their graves until all earthly things that still cling to them on this side of the tomb are atoned for; until they have entered into everlasting rest? You look at me in amazement! I am however, in earnest; for these spirits may, indeed, be seen; you may learn it by as many proofs as you like. Certainly you were told by your nurse that it is by no means every one who is gifted with the faculty of descrying spectres and spirits of the deceased; that there are, on the contrary, only certain people privileged to obtain a sight of these ghosts. All these things flashed into my mind once when I was experimenting, with persons of strong sensitiveness, upon the rottenness of fishes. I wished to know whether I should not be able to get more nearly acquainted with the fiery dead. Miss Leopoldine Reichel consented to go, in a very dark night in November, 1844, to the cemetery of Gruenzing near Vienna, situated at a short distance from my residence. She perceived, indeed, fiery phenomena on some of the mounds. Afterwards led to the vast burial-places of Vienna, she saw there a good many mounds surmounted by movable flames. The latter moved to and fro, all in the same way, like a file of dancers, or like soldiers when drilling. Some of them were nearly as big as adults; others small, crawling on the ground like dwarfish hobgoblins. But all of them made their appearance only in the rows of recent mounds; none of the mounds of an earlier date exhibiting any of these fiery guardians. Miss R. approached them rather timidly and slowly. At her approach the human forms died away; she perceived them to be nothing more than shining mists such as she had observes before by thousands in my dark room. Then she ventured to draw nearer, and met with nothing but bright vapour She stepped, undauntedly, into one of them; it reached up to her shoulders; she could blow it away by the motions of her garb. The dancing and drilling were dissolved into the motions of the wind, that had played in the same way with all these lamps. Another time I sent four sensitive persons to the cemetery of Sieuring. The darkness was then so impenetrable that some of them fell to the ground repeatedly on their way. But, after having arrived at the sepulchres; all of them saw the fiery, spectre-like shapes, more or less distinctly in proportion to the different degrees of their sensitive irritability. They imagined they saw air shining upon the recently closed tombs. One of them drew with his umbrella figures on those mounds. The characters so produced remained increasing in light on the scored soil. What was it, then? Nothing else but the decaying miasmas, exhaled from the tombs, which rise from the latter into the air, so that the wind may play with them; timidity interpreting their fluctuations in the draught of air as dances of living spirits. It is carbonic ammonia, hydrogetted phosphoric gas, and some other productions of decay, known, and unknown, which are developing light of Od by evaporation. When rottenness ceases, the glow fades away- the dead are expiated! But, my dear friend, we have to make atonement with our old women; we have to apologise for a wrong done to them. The fiery spirits above the tombs are, after all, existing in truth and fact; their existence cannot be denied; we must concede it to them whether we

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like or not to do so; and they will continue to be right. We are even obliged to avow it to be true, that spectres cannot be seen by everybody, but only by chosen individuals (Sensitives). It is not their fault that we did not comprehend what they assured us of thousands of years since. SOUND. FRICTION. SPRINGS In my last letter we assailed superstition, searching for it in one of its dens, which it has haunted for many centuries. Today I shall try to hit it once more in the same way. Let investigate the extension of Od through nature. In October, 1851, Mr Enter, an individual of moderate sensitiveness, was introduced into my dark room, as I intended trying whether sound did not stand in some relation to Od. I took a receiver of an air pump by its handle, and struck it cautiously with a key. As soon as it rung, it became luminous and visible. The stronger the stroke, the brighter the apparition. A rod of metal, a horse-shoe magnet, struck so as to ring, seemed to be enlarged while shining. A bell of metal, of a strong and piercing report, struck for some longer time, shone so intensely, that a bright lustre pervaded the whole room, being seen by every sensitive person present. On a violin being played, not only the strings, but the whole sounding board grew radiant. The ringing bodies became, in these cases, not only Od-shining, but they spread also a bright atmospheric clearness about them. They were, so to speak, surrounded by an aureole. Every wineglass struck with a knife by me, as people do in calling for a waiter, received a veil of light, brighter in proportion as the pitch of the tone was high. This veil of light exhibited a visible vibration like the sound itself. The spot I struck against was every time of the brightest lustre. Well, I now caused sensitive persons to put their hands in bells of this kind, both of glass and metal, in such a way as not to touch the body of the bell, anywhere. Whenever I struck against them outside, the left hand was affected with coolness, the right one with lukewarmness only; the sensation from Od, of course, setting in again, as in the experiment of the blue beam of the sun, of the upper end of the crystals, and the northward pole of the magnet. In short, I was gratified to have descried in sound, also, a very powerful source of Od. At another time (July, 1844), I examined the condition of friction, as to its relation to Od by giving into the left hand of Miss Maria Maix, a copper wire, the opposite end of which I had fastened to a small board. When I rubbed the latter with a board of the same description, heat ran along the wire into the sensitive hand. When I rubbed the wire in the dark on a grindstone that revolved on a turner's lathe, the whole wire grew glowing with Od, enveloping itself in its whole length in a glittering shine; on its opposite end arose a light in the form of a candle's flame. For a counter proof I took a glass tube of a barometer, putting one end of it in water, and rubbed it for some minutes against the grindstone turned quickly. The whole tube waxed bright, together with the glass of water. All Sensitives present, when tasting the latter, thought it lukewarm, bitter, and loathsome; one of them, whom I prevailed upon to empty it, experienced shortly afterwards a fit of violent and repeated retching. So every doubt was removed as to the very rapid development of Od from friction. This effect, in its further application, led to a result, which will give you, I am sure, much pleasure. I desired to know whether the friction of fluids, too, would elicit Od. Some glass vessels, well closed, the contents of which consisted of alcohol, ether, oil of turpentine, creosote, all became luminous, whenever shaken in the dark; so did their contents. But even water in well-corked bottles, when shaken, became luminous, and, held in the left hand, of a

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disgusting lukewarmness; as soon as the motion subsided it became again invisible, and, by the counter effect, cool. Whereupon, there rushed something strange to my mind- do not be frightened, it was neither more nor less than the ill-famed divining rod; the water searcher the spring-finder, dawned upon my memory. I reasoned as follows: If water, when shaken, could move Od, why could not, perhaps, running water do the same. In order to put it to the test, I twisted some paper thick around a glass tube, patting the part thus wound into the left hand of Sensitive persons, and poured some water from a glass pitcher, in a steady stream, through a glass funnel into it. All Sensitives present thought, as long as I continued pouring, that heat was communicated to them through the paper; that, on the other hand, coolness set in again as soon as I ceased pouring. When I repeated the experiment in the dark, the water in the tube, and, by and by, down the whole length of the tube, became luminous, and so continued as long as the pouring went on. There was no doubt of the fact that the water, by only running through a glass tube, was developing Od. My hope began to grow. I took Miss Zinkel, a lady of moderate sensitiveness, to the park surrounding my cottage. I knew the direction of an aqueduct, which was laid underground along a large meadow in the wood, and could not in any way be recognised on the surface. I induced her to walk slowly across the meadow; she being obliged, in doing so, to walk over the aqueduct in question. When she approached the latter, I saw her stop in her walk, stepping now forward, then backward, and, at last, standing still altogether, there, as she assured me she became affected up to her knees, especially in the left leg, with a lukewarm, repulsive sensation, which she had not felt during the whole walk over the meadow. She was then standing just above the artificial channel by which a spring was directed from a farm-house, a mile distant, towards the said aqueduct. I have repeated the experiment with many more sensitive persons, but every time with the same success; and, lo the divining and is thus arising from the deep humiliation into which it was undeservedly thrown by ignorance and ridicule. Not the wand as such- in all likelihood only the garb in which truth was wrapping itself; but surely its interior nucleus lay hidden, unable to assert its claim to acknowledgment. Why, the nucleus of this strange thing is nothing more than the effect of Od, set in activity by the friction of water, the motion of which is felt by sensitive persons. Mr Sourcis, in France, the renowned spring searcher, who is everywhere called for in his native land, having established an admirable practice in discovering fresh water springs, is certainly only a man of strong sensitiveness. As often as he steps over water flowing underground, he feels sensible of the influence of its Od upon his sensitive body. He is enabled, according; to his less or greater irritation, to conclude upon the greater or less depth of water, having acquired by practice such skill and certainty, as to have won the admiration and the thanks of all France. His secret- an enigma to himself, and which he, of course, could never betray, is now laid bare, and we shall perhaps live to see very soon hundreds of such spring-finders, both men and women; for every person of high sensitiveness will be exceedingly well fitted for this practice, after having exercised it for some time. Well, the divining- wand is henceforth common property, open to the free use of all mankind. HEAT. ELECTRICITY. MATERIAL CREATION. I may certainly dispense with directing your attention to the part which so powerful agencies as heat and electricity have to play in relation to Od. The complication, however, increases here so much that I do not see, in the compass of a few letters, sufficient room for it. I am limited, therefore, to a few facts precisely stated. When you hold before a sensitive friend a basin filled with glowing charcoal; or when you light alcohol near him, or lead him near a wood- fire, say at the distance of some yards; or throw before him some globules of

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calcium into water and ask him for the sensations caused by any of these things, you will certainly expect for answer, " heat." But it will surprise both you and your friend, when you find not heat but coolness to be the prevailing sensation produced by this kind of firework. Hand him a light wooden pole, about an ell long; cause him to hold it by one end and kindle it at the other. He will declare that his hand grows cold while holding the burning pole. Give him, instead of the wooden pole, an iron bar, a glass rod, a tube of china, and cause him to hold it over the air- tube of an Argand lamp. He will shake his head and declare that all these things grow cold in his band. The explanation of this anomaly is, that both heat and the process of fire consuming wood are developing Od. Conduct a wire of metal about an inch thick into your dark room, in such a way that one end of it is inside, the other outside; direct the latter over a fire- pan and heat it. As soon as the wire gets heated outside, your sensitive experimenter will tell you of the appearance of a small shining flame on the point of wire inside. Without any further delay I shall pass on to electricity; which I shall also despatch after giving a few features of it. The prevailing sensation on sensitive people, when brought near large bodies positively electrised, is coolness. An electropher well rubbed, on the contrary, gives off lukewarmness, whilst a fur exhales coolness. Strike a paste of resin strongly with a fox's tail before your sensitive friend, and let him look at it sideways. You will then learn that he sees arising from it, as it were, a flame, about one foot and a half high; the tail resembling a white shining roll. The flame arising from the electropher will die away a few minutes afterwards; but while blazing it will produce a bright smoke arising to the ceiling, and forming there a large illuminated orbit, like those we become acquainted with by the experiments on crystals and magnets poles. I have a rather large electric machine, the standard of which, as well as its conductor, are placed on the door of the room, the whole forming, therefore, a rather large apparatus. When the engine remains quiet, sensitive persons would but faintly see anything of it; when, however, the disk is set in motion, so slowly indeed that no electric light could become visible anywhere, the whole structure will yet grow luminous with a white lustre. Some Sensitives compared it to a car loaded with quicklime, which you know is whitish. A loaded bottle of transparent kleist appeared in a transparent light; a long iron wire conducted across the dark room, both the ends projecting outwards, by which I was discharging the bottle, became white luminous after every blow and so continued from four to five minutes. In the moment of discharging it, the sensitive persons present saw a more intensive brightness, like lightning, passing, along it, the direction of which, as from the interior covering to the exterior, they could designate to me. In regard to the voltaic column I shall mention but one fact, to wit, that the pole wire shut up not only becomes red hot, but that it is moreover surrounded by a screw like flame that, in violent motion, turns around it. One would think this fact alone sufficient to excite the most vivid interest of naturalists. What they have unlocked by an immense outlay of ingenuity, may be seized here, as it were with the hand by every sensitive child, and described with all its accidental circumstances by such, as a perception by his senses, namely, Ampere's screws of the Voltaic current. Well, I hope that there may be found, by and by, some sensitive naturalists, as I have met already with a good many sensitive medical men. But I cannot conjecture how long it may yet be before the interest of the naturalist will be set in motion upon this subject. Heat and electricity are, therefore, powerful resources of Od; but must I forbear explaining, at present, the abundance of phenomena; which they offer. Instead of it, I am about to lay, before you the last and most important sources of Od.

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M. Anschunlz, an Austrian captain in active service, an individual of moderate sensitiveness, lying on his sick-bed in Baden, near Vienna., felt his sensitiveness to have been materially increased during his illness. Lying restless on his couch, he was struck by perceiving, in very dark nights, the mountings, hinges and lock of the door, opposite his bed, though unable to discern anything else in the room. These objects appeared lucid, operating like self-illuminating matter. Other people, of high sensitiveness, saw all the mountings of their furniture, every key, all gilded objects in their room, every nail in the wall, shining and emitting small flames or illuminated smoke. I arranged a little muster-roll of some metals, all of which were found to be luminous, some more intensely, some less so, but visible to all present. A glass case filled with silver plate appeared in the dark stuffed with delicate fire. When I tried some other materials as coal, selenium, iodine, brimstone, all these, too, were found to be lucid. They looked as if phosphorescent, or, as it were, in a pellucid splendour; they could be almost looked into themselves. Besides this blaze, there was observed around these objects, by persons of high sensitiveness, the same emanation of light, dying away into vapour which we are already acquainted with in some other manifestations of concentrated sufficient Od; and in all these cases this emanation could be flared asunder and blown away by any breath or motion of air, sometimes being sufficient to illuminate the fingers held into the bright substance. They were not, however, seen of the same colour; this peculiarity affording a certain means of verifying the exactness of the observations. Thus everything of copper appeared red-hot, surrounded by a green blaze; tin, lead, palladium and cobalt, blue; bismuth, zinc, asmium, titan, calium, red; silver, gold, platinum, antimon, cadmium, white; nickel, chromium, greenish, approximating to a green-yellow; iron, almost variegate, playing in the colours of the rainbow; arsen, coal, iodine and selenium, red; sulphur, blue; the latter seeming to persons of even moderate sensitiveness oftentimes to be of the same colour. But even composite materials became luminous; some of them, indeed, very intensely so; to wit, theobromium white, paraban acid of a splendid blue, burnt-lime red. I arranged some hundreds of chemical preparations in a portable collection, closely disposed in rows, keeping them from the light, and unlocking them only in the dark room. Persons of moderate sensitiveness saw some only, but those of high sensibility, all of them, without exception, shining with more or less intensity. Even the brick walls of the dark room appeared to those persons, after a rather long stay there, delicately lucid and of a white lustre. This went so far as to enable my visionary guests to see, at last everything in the dark room, as it were in a twilight, so that they took me, who did not see anything at all, on their arm, carrying me safely along amidst my apparatus. Everything is therefore lucid, all and everything! We live in a world of luminous matter. As a violent spring of it is streaming forth from the sun, so upon the earth from everything emanates a faint manifestation of light. Loose bodies, as cotton stuffs, tissues of wool, wood, clay, are most faintly luminous. All stones are lucid; amongst the amorphic bodies, metals and the elements possess, in general, the brightest lustre. This fountain of light, streaming forth from everything existing, is more delicate, as to its intensity, than anything else before mentioned; but this is requited for by its immense extension. Now, is this principle of lucidity the power of Od? It is so in truth, because it is invested with every characteristic of the latter, and fitted out with every effect upon the senses of the bearers of Od. Place, I pray you, some sulphur, iodine, coal or graphite, on a small board, say of lime-tree wood, and cause any person of high sensitiveness to hold the hand tightly over it; you will then learn that the sensitive is affected by each of them in turn either tepidly or lukewarmly, either pleasantly or uneasily, the most powerfully by the most

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pellucid material, the least by those whose lustre is the faintest. Or, cause your sensitive guests to take in their hands, whether bare or covered with gloves, alternately bodies of every kind, either solid or liquid, without any vessel or in glass; they will feel everything differently, either more tepid or more lukewarm, more pleasant or more unpleasant: some of these materials being sometimes affected with an accidental power, such as brimstone, bromine, bichromate of potash, oxygen, arsen, quicksilver, copper. They would, however, as it were, by degrees be able to distinguish everything by sensation, according to the characteristics of Od manifested by these materials. Well, Od in a concentrated condition is, in fact, emanating not only from partial sources, but is joined to everything in nature, a universal dynamid distributed indeed unequally, bit spread all aver everything, as heat, electricity, affinity, weight, &c., are. It pervades and fills up the whole universe, extending as well to the most minute things as to the largest. EXAMPLES FROM THE MATERIAL CREATION Do you still remember the time when I told you that sometimes the prettiest girl would shrink from her looking- glass? From the contents of my last letter, you will have the reason for this strange fact. Quicksilver is one of those metals, which react most lukewarmly upon sensitive persons. Whenever anybody of this description is approaching, a large surface of mirror, he will feel sensible, over his entire, body, of the painful effect of mercury; he feels as if he were affected by a lukewarm, loathsome breath, that impels him to escape; and whenever ho tries to resist that impression, he will have fits of stomach-ache, nausea, headache, and even of vomiting; he is compelled to give way. This goes so far that persons of high sensitiveness, after having repeatedly experienced these effects, feel a positive horror of the looking-glass, so that they would rather cover it by a veil, if they are unable wholly to dispense with it. Let us now look back also to the aversion to the use of spoons of packfong, argentum or China-silver. Copper, especially, which forms the main component in all these sorts of alloy, is a body of strong odic power, reacting, however very lukewarmly and unpleasantly. You may plate it by a galvanic process with as much silver as you like, it will be all in vain; in spite of the silver coatings, the copper will push its effects through the latter, becoming intolerable even to persons of moderate sensitiveness, and engendering very frequently in those of keen sensitiveness, stomach-ache, nay, even convulsions of the tongue and lockjaw have been total, many times, by sensitive ladies, that they could not wear even jewels, without feeling ailments; that they could not endure any metal thimble, but were obliged to recur to an ivory one; that they did not dare to put on stays with iron busks that they would be unable to wear a metal comb in their hair, nay, even hair pins in their headdress, only by reason of the lukewarm and loathsome reaction of Od. For sensitive girls engaged in domestic services, brass mortars, kitchen utensils of copper, and especially smoothing irons of metal are objects of great annoyance. Mr Fichtner, an esteemed proprietor of a factory in Azersdorf, near Vienna, of moderate sensitiveness, banished from his kitchen every utensil of brass, not being able to endure the taste of either eatables or beverages prepared in vessels of this description. You may hide metals either under paper, or linen, or any light cover you choose; persons of high sensitiveness would not fail to point out the place where they were hidden, merely by stretching out the palm of the hand, and this without any contact, hut simply by the aid of the sense of feeling. Does not the

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ninth of my letters recur to your mind here, where I mentioned the friction of water and Monsieur Sourcier? Suppose there should he hidden underground though not deeply, for instance in a cellar? some metal or money there is no doubt that a person of high sensitiveness would point them out even more Busily and sooner by sensation, than my persons of moderate sensitiveness discovered the aqueduct across the park. Suppose, for example, that a lode of galena, of pyrite of copper, or of Rothgueldigerz (ore of sulphuretted antimonial silver), &c., should project very deeply under the surface of the soil, as such gangues of ore are found oftentimes not deeper than a few feet beneath the alluvial soil, and a sensitive of the highest description should cross it, his attention having been called to it, can you doubt a moment, after what you have learned, that he would be both sensible of it and able to point out, exactly, where the metallic treasures were hidden? But, again; suppose, for instance, that a pit-coal layer lies near the surface; certainly it will influence very persons in a different way from those of red-stone or argillaceous slate, in which the former is embedded. A sensitive; having previously observed and acquired the sensations imprinted by Od arising from a mass of pit-coal, would perceive them the very moment he treads over such stratum. Nobody else would scent the existence of such a thing; but a person gifted with high sensitiveness would pronounce it with full confidence. Here and there is to be found, under ground, this or that mineral; and digging after it would justify this apparent miracle, which has hitherto seemed the more wonderful us the finder himself could not account for it, either to himself or to others. The miracle is now laid bare; it is nothing but a mere physical influence of the dynamid of Od upon the nervous structure of man, operating like a dull sense, nobody being able to give information thereabout. Thus, it may be supposed that a good many occurrences, as to the instincts in animal life, may be explained in the same way in which I have just tried to explain the facts in regard to metal and ore finders. Well, my dear friend, thus you have got the last secret of the magic wand, not indeed of the divining-rod, in literal sense with its stoopings, turnings and strikings against the soil,- all these things having been probably nothing else but. the hocus-pocus designed for the curious mob, to whose acquisitiveness the performer was obliged to throw out something palpable, but the very nucleus, which has been deeply hidden, down to the present time. You may infer, from the preceding facts, of what practical importance sensitiveness will prove susceptible by and by, and what part it will have to play in a not very distant future. This class of people on whose uttermost outskirts appear cataleptic, lunatic and somnambulic persons, will be, before long, looked for and hired as benefactors of their neighbourhood of their district, of their country. This discovery promises, above all, an uncommon progress to the mining art, not only by unlocking new layers of ore, but also for working in the interior of the mines, whenever a bed of ore is shifted, when lodes are intercepting each other when a nest is filled up, &c, where to turn, in order to cut-up new openings; where to look for the lost lode, either in the lying stock or in the hanging. Even the most rational mineralogy leaves the miner in the dark about all topics like these. A sensitive person, initiated but a little into the sensations engendered by Od, would in any of these cases assist the miner in recovering instantly his right track. The sensitive feeling is susceptible of an uncommon development. Whenever I have met, for the first time, with people gifted with this peculiarity, their statements were often, to my surprise, rather vague. After a couple of sessions, however, everything grew clear and decisive. When the application to these sensations is continued for some time, the latter acquire more clearness, and the skill increases. I have friends of moderate sensitiveness, who,

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by having engaged in these experiments for six or seven years. have acquired such a shrewdness of distinction as to surpass sometimes even persons of high sensitiveness who have only recently applied themselves to investigations of this description. People like these will be, for the future, of great advantage in detect the adulteration of goods. Even at present a person of good sensitiveness would be able easily to discern pure silver and gold from that which as alloyed by copper. This faculty may, however, be developed so as to serve in testing every kind of mixture, so that, for instance, in an apothecarys shop drugs may be examined to see whether they contain or have lost their efficacious properties; nay, I may show you later, perhaps, what striking diagnoses on sickbeds may be obtained by the mere feelings of sensitive persons in good health. LOADING AND CONDUCTION OR OD. APPROXIMATION. You know at present the most, important sources of Od at least as far as I have succeeded in describing them up to the present time. Crystals, sun and moon, magnets, plants, animals and men, chemism with fermentation and decay, sound, friction joined to motion of water, heat, electricity- in fine the whole material world with different degrees of force- all these display in a remarkable manner many phenomena, both sensible and. visible which we are unable to range under the dynamics known to us hitherto, but offering a common point of view, whence their mutual relation may be derived, so that they may properly be treated of as an independent doctrine of the science of Physics. We shall try now to view, in regard to some of its attributes, the principle on which they must be considered to be based. The first attribute we meet with is that of conduction, or transmission, from one body to any other; that is, its susceptibility of transloading. Anything either hot or electrified turns another brought in contact with it also hot or electrified. It is said, then, that dynamids can be transloaded. The same is the case as to Od. You have seen a glass of water placed at the poles of crystals or Magnets or tied to a rubbed glass pole, or placed in either sun or moonlight, or in the blue or red colours of the rainbow, assuming the condition of Od. You may, however, replace the glass of water by any other body whatever. Take a piece of wood, a ball of yarn, your watch, a china- plate, a small stone, a piece of sugar, or whatever may be at hand; cause one, of your sensitive guests to try it in his hand, and bring it then for a short time before a pole exhaling Od, then give it over again into the same, hand of the sensitive; the latter will find it to be altered; he will tell you that it is rendered either warmer or cooler than it was before. But, mark well, he will find it to be altered exactly in the same manner as the source of Od, to which you exposed the object in question, would have acted upon him, not in the contrary may, as would be the case with steel-magnetism. There takes place, accordingly, no other change or process than that the pole emitting Od has turned the indifferent object placed within its sphere of action into the same condition of Od with which itself was overflowing. There is exhibited communication, transmission, transloading, carefully to be distinguished from induction. The former is an effect of Od, the latter a peculiar kind of magnetic influence upon some other bodies. All those several glasses of water, which you saw exposed to divers sources of Od, were loaded with Od, Odified, and the alteration that took place with them must be considered as analogous to that going on in a glass of water whenever either heated or cooled. It is the same water, there being nothing palpable added, only a dynamic modification has happened; but this modification has, in a way worth noticing, influenced the sense of taste. You may prove this fact in respect to the Odlight. Conduct one end of a copper wire into a dark room, leaving the other outside in the daylight; place near to the latter, one by one, a crystal pole, a magnet pole, or one of your hands or go over it with a file, or put it in a glass

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in which you will prepare a Seiditz powder, or hold it over a coal-fire, or bring it within the sphere of distribution of an electric conductor. Your sensitive friend will, in every one of these cases, see the wire in the dark becoming lucid, and, on its end, a little smoky flame mixed with sparkles streaming forth as long as you continue influencing the wire. The Od transloaded upon the wire will increase the lustre pouring forth from the point of its end, visible to the sensitive eye, and then dispersing into the air. In the same manner there flows from the points of your fingers, your toes, from your whole body, a constant current into the air; and this escape is nothing else but real transloading of Od upon the air. One of the most efficacious transloadings is brought about by the breathing of all living beings. In the lungs, as is well known, goes on a very vivid chemical action. Od is, in consequence of the laws already explained, put in. motion, and is transloaded upon the air inspired, which afterwards, heavily loaded with Od, is exhaled. Mrs. Cecilia Baner, the buxom consort of a landlord at Vienna, of solid health, but strongly sensitive, told me, in considerable alarm, that, whenever she awoke in a dark night, and could discern nothing else whatever, she could, nevertheless, see her sleeping husband and her child, as it were, shining beside her, and from the mouth of both of them arising at every respiration bright clouds of vapour. This was breath loaded with Od, which almost anybody of sensitive quality will see in the dark issuing forth from his own mouth like small clouds from a tobacco- pipe. Now call to mind my first letter, and the omnibus or the railroad car, crowded with people, in which a sensitive person, to whom the reaction of any homonymous Od becomes painful, is squeezed amidst other people. Well the air in so confined a room becomes, in a very short time, by the respiration of so, many human beings and the breathing of so many lungs, completely loaded and overloaded with Od; the. sensitive is no longer able to draw a breath without inhaling air as strongly charged with Od as that which he is forced to exhale. Pray, imagine the condition. of the unhappy being if you refuse to open the window of the bar; he is on the rack, and no one can divine or comprehend his tortures. You will, of course. bestow upon him, henceforth, your compassion and, your kind assistance, You will, likewise, comprehend now, why a person of high sensitiveness cannot stay for a long time in a large company, at least in rooms whose ceilings are not sufficiently high. The air there is soon overloaded with Od; the sensitive feels anxious uncomfortable, and, unless he can escape, grows irritated on the slightest pretext, The longer he is obliged to stay, the more is he put out of humour. Sensitives are similarly affected when in bed. By the emanations of Od from themselves, they are loading their cushions, coverlets and couch. By and by it grows loathsome and disturbs their rest; they turn about, shifting from one side to the other all through the night, trying to get rid, of their coverings, and feeling quiet again only when they have succeeded in uncovering themselves. An individual of high sensitiveness is at any time a troublesome being; proverbially a "mauvais coucheur," obliged to be so by his predisposition. He constantly transloads from himself upon his clothes, Od homonymous to the limbs that are covered by them. Clothes and limbs both loaded with homonymous Od, mutually react with lukewarm effect. The sensitive man always suffers, therefore, some molestation when quiet, and finds relief only by motion musing the removal of Od. He can endure only light clothing, and every garment seems too heavy for him. He is instinctively pushed on to a constant shifting of position and occupation. Od is not only susceptible of being transloaded upon any other body, but it can also be conducted through everything. We have already seen a proof. of this description, where the

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sensitive held out a pole into the sunshine. The Od emanating from the latter (Heliod) passed through the former into his hand. But, pray, make an artificial pole, by joining together one of wood and one, of metal, to which attach a wax taper and lastly fasten, a silken cord to it. Transmit this compound pole at its wooden end to the left hand of your sensitive friend, and after he has made himself for half a minute, completely acquainted with it, seize upon the silk cord with your right fingers. After some seconds you will be told that the pole grows cool; put, on the contrary, your left fingers upon it and it will suddenly change, becoming lukewarm. and loathsome. Place the silk cord on a pole of crystals, in the rainbow of the prism, in moonshine, in soda-powder, or brimstone, anywhere, you will have the effects corresponding to the fountain of Od, directed through the different materials of conduction to the sensitive hand. You may, likewise, compose conducting-poles of this kind of sulphur, glass, silk, resin, gutta-percha, and of any idioelectric body whatever; all of them would conduct Od as well as metals. There is no insulator for this dynamid. That is the very difficulty which it offers to every investigation. Nevertheless, it is not even necessary that you should bring the pole- the end of which the sensitive person holds in his hand- in actual contact with any bearer of Od. Mere approximation will do. Put in his hand a glass pole, and draw near with the points of your fingers to its opposite end without touching it anywhere. You will learn , instantly, that you produce upon both the pole and the sensitive hand the same effect; less intense, but as to quality the same. Bring the pole of a crystal, a cat's paw, a dose of bichromate of potash locked up in a glass, a piece of sulphur, a bottle of wine must, when in fermentation, very near such a compound pole, and the sensitive hand will immediately feel the corresponding reaction. This agrees with every lucid emanation from all these sources of Od. Good conductors, as metals, glass silk, will grow lustrous by any strong transloading, or by my intense permeation of Od, being surrounded in their entire length with a bright veil of vapour, whether there be actual contact or only approximation. DUALISM OF OD. Wherever you look in nature you will meet with dualistic contrasts. Even on that territory over which we are rambling at present, they are not wanting. You have already met with some of them, separately in the metals, magnets, both sides of animals, and men, Wherever you have met with a reddish-yellow light of Od, with lukewarm and loathsome feelings on one side, and with a blue light, cool and pleasant, on the other. But this kind of opposition exhibits itself in the manifestations of Od in numberless cases, belonging to the inmost substance of this dynamid. Let us take, at this time, for our point of departure, the simple chemical bodies, the so called elements. Transmit to the left hand of your sensitive friend, one at a time, a small bottle of calcium, and another filled with powdered sulphur. You will bear him by and by declare the effect of the former to be lukewarm and loathsome; that of the latter cool and pleasant. Do the same with natrum, gold, platina, quicksilver, copper on one side, afterwards with selen, iodine, phosphor, tellur, arsenic on the other side. You will then learn the effects of the former are both nauseous and tepid, those of the latter cool and agreeable; these effects differing only as to their greater or less intensity. Nay, you may be enabled, by this graduated difference in the Odic power of the simple bodies, to correct them in a line, at one end of which is placed calium, as the most tepid and loathsome of all; on the other, oxygen as the coolest body; and, when looking on this line with keen penetration, you will be surprised to learn that it corresponds, with very few variations, to that which chemistry has determined-

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according to the respective affinity of the several elements to oxygen, called the electrochemical line. We have arrived in quite a different way at the same result- to a line corresponding with the former, which we are bound to call Od- chemical line. Must we not be surprised at seeing an ignorant, plain girl, with no other instrumentality than the touch of her fingers, able to arrange, within the short space of an hour, the whole world of matter in its elements; the building up of which system has occupied for half a century the immense industry and exertions of the highest ingenuity amongst the most learned men of our age? The celebrated Berzelius, originator of the electro-chemical system, was vividly sensible of this fact, when I represented to him, in 1845, at Carlsbad, the evidences on this matter. But, since his death, the surviving chemists have not thought such a trifle worth attending to. There was even a physiologist (Mr. Emil du Bois Reymond, at Berlin, in Karsten's Progress of Physic), who ventured to accuse the dead Berzelius of the infirmity of old age, for that one reason alone, that he had pleaded energetically for my researches before the public. In order to account for the inconsistency of this judgment, it would suffice modestly to add, Berzelius had occasionally lost his reason! In this line of Odic bodies, the amorphic bodies separately considered do not exhibit any dualistic property, and each of them must be considered to be unipolar, in the same sense as the experimenter on electricity thought soap to be; but when all embraced in their totality, and so regarded as a collective unity, that contrast will nevertheless become rather conspicuous, by force of which them art produced at one end tepid and, at the opposite, cool sensations in the sensitive hand. It is, manifestly, Odic polarity bestowed upon the material world; and, whereas the left lukewarm bodies would prove the electro-positive ones, and the cool, on the contrary, the electro-negative ones, I feel obliged, for the came reason, to call the former Od-positive, the latter Od-negative. On compound bodies, I found alkalies and alkaloids, and whatever shows any characteristics of the latter, to be "Od positive"; haloid salts, on the contrary, most oxides, and acids, Od-negative. Organic matter, as gummi, amyline some greasy oils, together with paraffin, must be placed near the middle. As to crystals, I have found every time the point where they had grown up from the ground, exhibiting itself on the left lukewarm, but, on the upper point cool, and of a blue lustre. This rule may be pursued down to the fibrous crystallisations, and even to those formations which scarcely exhibit any trace of crystalline texture. The base of crystals is, therefore Od-positive, their point is Od-negative. Magnets, on their southward pole, are felt by a sensitive left hand, lukewarm, and seen by a sensitive eye, of a reddish lucidity; in this case, of course, Od-positive on the northward pole, cool and blue- luminous, and, therefore, Od-negative. (Some naturalists, though by no means all, assert the north pole of the magnetic needle to be magneto- positive, without adducing any precise reason; but I am tempted, from my results obtained from Od, to doubt the truth of this assertion. Both Od-positive and Od-negative bodies act, as we have learned, in the same way. The, north pole of the needle cannot be, of consequence, anything but magneto-negative.) Heat, chemism and sound have exhibited in experiments, up to the present time, only Od-negative effects; friction only Od-positive. Experiments need to be extended further on the contrasts of Od. The sunlight polarised as to its transmitted portion is Od-positive; as to its reflected part, Od-negative. In the spectrum, the red, orange, and yellow, as well as those rays which are beneath the red, prove altogether Od-positive; the

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blue, the violet, and the chemical rays, Od-negative. The same is manifested by the moonspectrum, and even by the faint spectrum of an Argand lamp. Animals, especially human bodies, exhibit themselves on their whole right side, from head to foot, Od-positive; on their whole left, Od-negative. This is manifested most distinctly on both the toes and points of the fingers, and especially on the roots of the nails, that is, on the points of the most vivid organic activity of the human hand. Man is, of course, in respect to his breadth, polarised; but he is, moreover, in possession of some other Odic axis, though less prevailing than the last mentioned, to wit, an axis in respect to his length, and one as to his thickness; the development of both I must refrain from treating now, on account of the limited space of these letters. Confirm your conviction of these things by some other easy experiments. Put before your sensitive friend a sheet of clean paper, of medium blue colour, and let him look at it alternately, now with his left, then with his right eye, each time shutting the other eye. He will declare the view by the left eye to be agreeable, that by the right, on the contrary, disgusting. The left eye is Od-positive; the blue colour, however, is operating, as you know, Od-negatively. there have, of course, met with each other, heteronymous agencies, and the effect has been a pleasant one. In the other cue, when the right eye was looking at the blue, there met homonymous powers the effect becoming, therefore, loathsome to the sensation. Try to counter-prove last experiment by changing the blue sheet paper for an orangecoloured one. Every time you would obtain the same result, only for the opposite eye. You perceive, however, from this delicate experiment, that the loathsomeness the yellow, and the agreeableness of the blue colour depend chiefly upon the perception by the left eye, as the effect of this side prevails over that of the right side. Look, at a short distance, from out your right eye into the left of a sensitive friend. This will not offend him, stipulating, however, that the other eye be shut meanwhile. Look, on the contrary, with your left eye into his left. Then, he will feel at once uneasy, and will not stand before you for a moment; he will not sustain your look, and, if you attempt to enforce it upon him, he will turn away from you. When the person is a man of high sensitiveness, even this short trial would exercise upon him so strong and repulsive an influence that he would be totally blinded for, some seconds. Nay, It may indeed happen, if you compel him to stay, that he not escape vomiting. Left looking into left is an homonymous contact, and this is intolerable to every sensitive person. May there not be, in the relation of the sexes, also some dualism of Od, that could be descried by investigation? This question I have put to nature by the following experiment. I placed both a man and a woman opposite a sensitive female; in, the right hand of each of the former, I put a glass of water. After six minutes when I thought the water to be sufficiently Odified, I caused the sensitive to taste each glass . She declared both to be cool, but, that from the hand of the man far cooler than. that from the hand. of the woman . After that, I placed both persons before a sensitive man, and proceeded in the same way. He, however, found the water from the hand of the female to be cooler than that from the male, You may see, from this fact, very clearly, that male and female too are in polar opposition. You have remarked that I availed myself, in all my experiments on Sensitives, of the left hand of the sensitive persons, never of the right. The reason is no doubt obvious to you. Cool, and lukewarm, are by no means absolute effects of exterior irritation upon sensitive subjects, but only relative ones, referring to a certain side of the body; on the other side of the

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sensitive the opposite sensation is prevailing. In order to avoid any confusion in my explanations, I have referred all my experiments to one side only, preferring the left because of the impressions upon that being usually more intense and of greater clearness. I might have chosen as well the right side; the results would have been the same, though accompanied by opposite lights and sensations. THE RAINBOW OF OD. THE POLAR- LIGHT OF OUR GLOBE. The splendour of the rainbow in the brightness of day has often warmed your heart. I shall try to lead you to a rainbow in darkness and night. A sensitive person of faint sensitiveness sees nothing in the dark on either pole of a crystal but a greyish, undefined cloud, a dull glimmering amidst the universal darkness. A moderate sensitive discerns the light on one of the poles to he bluish-grey or blue, on the other yellow or reddish-yellow, just an on his right and left hands. A sensitive of keener susceptibility sees that neither the blue nor yellow is pure; that within each of these colours there are flaring some other hues, as green, red, orange, violet, &c., and that each of the flames on the poles, regarded carefully, offers a variegated aspect; this means, however, that the latter appear only as additional colours that is, as specks of fainter tint in the general blue of the one, and the general red of the opposite pole. It was a sensitive invalid sailor, Fred. Weidlich, who first (in February, 1846) directed my attention to the fact, that these colours did not always play into each other, but that they deposited themselves quietly one upon another, and arrayed themselves whenever they had not been disturbed or mixed together by any draught of air, caused either by my motions or my breath. When I asked information as to the arrangement of the deposits, I learned that the lowest was the deposit of the red somewhat obscured by a good deal of smoke; above it there appeared orange, then bright yellow, then straw- colour, then siskin- green, then dark- green, the latter passing into blue, first into a light then into dark blue; uppermost violet- red made its appearance and died gradually away into a smoke- like vapour; all, however, intermingled with many small brilliant sparkles or stars. The same facts, which I thus learned from this man, I have since had confirmed by a great- number of sensitive persons in thousands of nightly experiments. Now, what else can this be but the succession of colours of the prismatic spectrum? The appearance of a bright iris in absolute darkness. What a wonderful sight! All persons of high sensitiveness have described it as the most splendid vision they had ever seen. I set up a magnet perpendicularly, the south pole upwards; a red tint prevailed upon all the colours of the rainbow that were gathering quietly above it. I inverted it, the north pole upwards; a lustre of a bluish colour appeared lying upon the smothered iris. The cross-cut of the magnet measured a square inch. In order to lessen this surface, I put upon it a pointed iron-cap. The emanation of light became thinner, more lucid and higher, but the succession of the rainbow colours continued. Instead of the one-pointed cap, I put on a cap with two teeth; then came forth flames from either of them, from the one a blue, from the other a yellowreddish one. At last, I put on a cap with four teeth, now every tooth afforded a flame of different colour- the first a small, blue flame, the second a yellow, the third a red, the fourth, a flame of whitish-grey; all four together arose perpendicularly from the four corners of the magnet, Thus I had succeeded in separating some colours of this problematical iris from each other, fixing each of them by itself, as it were, independent of the rest.

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When I caused the magnet to turn round its vertical axis, the colours were not drawn along with it, but remained stationary; and when the tooth of the small flame, originally yellow, had arrived at the point where had been previously that of the blue light, the yellow had turned into blue, the blue into grey, the grey into red, and so on. The colours were, therefore, not only dependent upon the magnet, but they betrayed also a relation to an exterior circumstance. The explanation was soon apparent. It was the different sections of the heaven determining the different colours of the pole. The blue light appeared each time on the tooth directed northward, the yellow on that directed westward, the red southward, and the greyishwhite eastward. I might turn the magnet, with its four teeth, in any direction whatever; the colours did not vanish, but were continually arranged in their mutual relations, corresponding to the points of the compass. Instead of the four upright teeth, I fastened to my magnet horizontally a square iron plate, of the surface of a square foot. As soon as it was put on the upward pole of the magnet, there sprang forth immediately, from all our corners of it, flames similarly coloured, but horizontal, like those that had emanated vertically from the four teeth. When I turned the plate by half a quadrant on the four corners of it, there set in mixed colours- towards northwest green, towards south-west orange, towards south-east greyish-red, towards north-east violet. Afterwards, I took a disk of iron, putting it on the erect magnet. There dawned forth from the dark the beautiful image of a circular rainbow. The lustre streamed forth around the disk; it passed from north through all gradations of blue into all shades of green, and from that, towards west into those of green-yellow, yellow, orange; towards south into red, greyish-red; then towards east into grey. Towards north-east a red stripe became rather distinctly defined, but towards north the blue colour set in again. After this, I ordered a hollow ball of iron to be prepared, so large that I could hardly enfold it in my arms, suspending it on a silken cord in the air in the middle of my dark room. In its interior I fastened across it, vertically, an iron pole twined around with six strands of copper wire, which I could join at pleasure to a voltaic apparatus of zinc and silver plates, according to Smee and Young; no part of it being visible outside. As soon as I had turned the iron- pole into an electro-magnet, the sensitive persons present saw the suspended ball stepping forth from the darkness, clad in various colours. The whole surface was glittering in rainbow light. The scales of the ball toward the north were blue, those toward the north- west green, those toward the west yellow, toward the south- west orange, toward the south red, toward the south-east greyish-red, toward the east grey, toward the north-east reddish stripes mixed with blue recurred again. The colours were visibly forming delicate lines one beside another, separated by others darker. The whole ball was wrapt in a delicately shining sphere of vapour. The upper Od-negative half bore throughout a more bluish lustre over all its colours; the lower Od-positive half, on the contrary, a rather reddish light. On the top, where was the north pole of the electro-magnet, arose palm-high over the globe, an illuminated column of light playing into blue, then curving in all directions like an open umbrella, and running down all around the ball at a distance of two to three inches from it. From the other pole, the south pole, on the lower part arose similar sheaves of lustre, of reddish colour all around the ball, Both these shining phenomena continued falling asunder and died away before reaching the equator of the globe. It is evident that I intended arranging a terrel in the sense of Burlow, that is, a small suspended globe with a North and South pole, fitted out with the proper appliances, and put

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to the touch-stone of Od light, it may indeed he seen that these results resemble, in a surprising way, those of the northern and southern lights of our planet. They will stand closer comparison in regard to further parallelisation so perfectly well as to make the supposition very probable that the northern lights will prove to be positive Od light. Thus we perceive that no phenomenon of Od is one-coloured, but that on closer inspection, it would every time he dissolved into a regular iris. MAGNETISM AND ODISM OF OUR GLOBE Whereas the stratification of the Od light is arranged, as you learned from my last letter, according to the points of the compass the latter must, of course, carry something in themselves, which has an intimate connection with Od. If even a common pocket magnet, by force of the Od which it contains, possesses such an influence upon these objects, it becomes strikingly evident that magnetism emanating from so vast a fountain of Od as our orb, that is, the magnetism of the earth, must exercise as vast an influence upon all and every phenomenon on our sphere. This influence is nothing else but Od, joined. everywhere to magnetism, which adheres, of course, to the magnetic poles of our globe, being operative from them all over our planet. We may properly call it Earth-Od. You have seen the magnetic pole which imparts odic coolness to the left hand, as every electro-magnetic body does, turning northward whenever it is set free, as in the mariner's compass. We were, consequently, obliged to acknowledge that both the pole and the Od engrafted upon it were negative. And, whereas the earth-pole which attracts it in that direction can only be heteronymous, you may conclude that the north pole of our globe is Odpositive, and of course the south pole, Od-negative. You may, from this fact, infer moreover that the whole northern hemisphere must be of Od-positive condition; the southern, on the contrary, of Od-negative. From this fact we shall attempt a palpable application to common life. I have, in my first letter, directed your attention to the circumstance that no sensitive person would be able to sleep on the left, but only on the right, side. I dare affirm, being fully confident of it, that this would not be so in Australia, nor in Chile, nor in Buenos Ayres; that, on the contrary, every sensitive person in those countries would he eager to lie down to rest on the left side. Near the equator they would be, however, quite indifferent whether to go to sleep reposing on their right or on their left side. So it must be. The northern soil of our earth is Od-positive. Whenever you turn to it the left or Od-positive side of your sensitive friend, there sets in a homonymous connection, or conjunction, or contact, which he cannot hear. Its effect upon him is tepid and loathsome, disturbing him and driving away sleep. But put him on his Odnegative right side, and the annoyance would be removed by bringing about a heteronymous contact; the negative side of the body and positive of the soil being turned face to face and his whole condition rendered quiet and easy. The sensitive would fall asleep instantly. In the southern hemisphere, the opposite results would take place. Behold here the profound cause of a thing unimportant; and pathology may then, register it among its established truths. A similar, but more important object I am about merely to touch upon in passing. I have not told you anything, (in order to save room) of the odic condition of the human body, as regards its axis of length. Avoiding all argumentation whatever, I would only state that I have discovered the human body to be Od-negative as to its uppermost part, to wit, the brain, but Od-positive as to its parts, namely, the belly.

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Let us assume this fact to be true and arrange, in the middle of your room, four chairs, so that the back of the first be directed north- ward, the second westward, the third southward, and the fourth eastward; then ask your sensitive friend whether it be indifferent to him on which of these fear seats he sits down in order to rest. After having tried them one by one, he would state that he felt most at his ease upon that one on which he turns his back to the north and his face to the South; and least so upon that on which he is obliged to turn his back to the west and his face to the east. I shall pass over the peculiarities of the other seats, inviting you once more to extend the last experiment of sitting down to, the couch of your sensitive friend. Have him lie down; then move the bedstead by and by toward the four quarters of the compass. You will hear him very soon say that he feels comfortable in that situation where his head is lying northward and his feet southward, the explanation being, obvious. The upper half of the human body is, in relation to its axis of length, Od-negative, the northern pole of the earth being Od-positive, Facing each other they afford a heteronymous, and of course an agreeable connection. The lower half of the human body is Od-positive, and gives, in reference to the negative southern pole of the earth, a heteronymous connection. Any, other position in sitting or lying would be less pleasant, and more or less disagreeable, tepid, loathsome and disturbing of sleep. There are some amongst my sensitive friends who never travel without a compass, since they have been informed by me of these facts, at every inn arranging their couch according to the magnetic needle. Men and women of high sensitiveness I found, totally unable to get asleep in any other position than upon a north and south line. For the position of the bedstead as so powerful an influence, even upon persons of moderate or low sensitiveness, as, for example, on Mr, Delliez, professor of French, at Vienna, that it not only affects their rest at night, but also determines their general health. A sensitive person in good health ought to take the following as a rule, that his couch should always be placed with its head toward the north: a sensitive patient, however, ought to be brought by all means, into the position just mentioned; otherwise his cure would be next to impossible. I may at present return with you into church, where I left you, in my first letter, attending the person fallen into a swoon. In building Christian temples, it was adopted from the customs of the heathen nations as a rule to place the altar in the eastern part of the church, so as to give the nave the opposite or western side. The audience, of course, are obliged to take their seats in such an arrangement, so that, their faces being turned towards the altar, their backs are turned westward. This is, however, as you have learnt just that direction which a sensitive person cannot bear at all, his Od-positive left being thus turned to the Od-positive north pole of our planet; his Od-negative right at the same time, to the Od-negative south pole. The man is sitting, therefore, under the double influence of homonymous connections, while totally unable to endure them. Whenever that influence continues operating for any length if time perchance through all the hours of the service, he is unavoidably attacked, unless his sensitive disposition is feeble, by successive fits of uneasiness. He feels hot, restlessness and anxiety seize upon him; he becomes tormented by headache and nausea, and unless lie could escape, would at length faint. Occurrences like this you may observe every Sunday in any of the large churches; nothing else but the improper situation of the persons affected being the cause thereof. All these incidents extend themselves to the everyday occurrences of common life. In the interest of sensitive persons, no chair or other seat should be so placed as to oblige the sitter to turn his back to the west. Even in this direction becomes intolerable to sensitive persons. Mr. Philippi, major in the engineer corps of the Austrians, a man of moderate

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sensitiveness, and an experienced navigator, when at sea desires no compass in to determine the cardinal points. He requires, for that purpose, nothing more than to stand upright and turn round, indicating with his face the direction of the west or north. Every sensitive sailor would easily learn this finding out the respective poles according to the same law, by force of which the spring finder succeeds in discovering the subterranean spring. These things reach so far into common life as to decide even upon the position of any furniture, any machine, any piano-forte, A sensitive lady to play with me very often at the piano. But when doing so she never felt comfortable, not being aware of the reason, my instrument being, nevertheless, an excellent one. Notwithstanding this, every time she played, a marked uneasiness came over her. After some reflection, it did not escape me that the sides of my grand piano-forte were placed in the meridian; the performer having in front the south pole, her back being turned to the north. She was sitting, of course, before the Od-positive poles of just as long as were the steel strings extended toward her. She could by no means, if obliged to remain any longer, bear with them, and would have fallen senseless from the chair in this position. I changed the position of the piano-forte so that she sat, afterwards, southward of it, and having before her nothing but north poles; now all was right, and she played thenceforth cheerfully and with delight. A grand piano-forte should never be allowed to be situated so as to oblige the player to be to the south or west of it. No sensitive person so seated would feel easy before it. I knew a man, an honest father of a family, an industrious weaver, but also a rather sensitive individual. He changed his lodging, and from that very time he began to dislike his loom. he lost application, got into the tavern, into the wine and beer shop, neglected his trade, and went at last to destruction. His loom stood, in his former residence, in a northern direction; in the latter, in a western one, in respect to the back of the workmen. He could, not bear this, the torture really produced by Od, but the source of which he could not discover. The disagreeable impulses, which he was on the other side unable to resist, drove the poor wretch into ruin. Thousands of people who are obliged to earn their livelihood in a sitting posture, mechanics, seamstresses, clerks, artists, especially painters, who want the light from the north to fall upon their productions, being obliged, of course, to be seated with their backs turned. to the north- all lose, at length, cheerfulness at their work; perishing guiltless victims of the ignorance hitherto prevailing about these hidden physical relations. VELOCITY OF CONDUCTION. RADIATION. DISTANCE OF PROJECTILE MOTION, ATMOSPHERE OF OD. ODOSCOPE, ETYMOLOGY OF THE WORD "OD." CONCLUSION. You know, indeed, the fact of the conduction of Od through every body; but you do not know the velocity with which it works. That of electricity is, as is well known, very great; that of heat, on the contrary, exceedingly slow. Od occupies, in this respect, rather the middle place between the two. I strained an iron wire two hundred feet long, bringing to one end several Od-producing materials, hands, crystals, magnets, one by one. A man of high sensitiveness, felt the corresponding effect of it arriving at the other end of the wire about half a minute afterwards. You may, of course, infer from this fact, that the Od proceeds, so slowly along the wire as to enable anybody to keep pace with it in running. You have seen that transloading and conduction were brought about, even without any actual contact of the source of Od, by merely approaching it. We do not, however, know at present whether this happened by imbibition of the lucid emanations from the source of Od,

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or by radiation; for the circumstance that Od may come with the sunbeams, may be carried along with them, through the glass prism, may, be broken by that process or polarised by panes of glass- this circumstance does not afford us any exact information as to whether Od is expanding in the way of radiation, or not; for Od of such formation may be only the result of the sunbeams thrown upon any solid receiver. But place a sensitive friend opposite yourself, and make the double-handed pass down his body, at the distance of half an arm's length, he will feel it very much as if a cool breeze ran over him. Step back one pace, and repeat the motion of the pass towards him once more; lie will feel again coolness, though of a rather fainter intensity. Retire again by two, three or four paces. Your friend will continue feeling your passes, though of a decreasing power, yea, he will feel them still when you retire the whole length of the room. Withdraw from him by degrees, still further into the chamber the effect will lesser, but yet be sensible. With a person of moderate susceptibility, you retire for a distance of forty to sixty feet before the sensation of your passes becomes problematic, and, at last, insensible. A pass from below, upwards, is felt at a still greater distance than one from above, downward. But I have experimented with Sensitives of high susceptibility, with whom even the effect of my hand-passes at one hundred and fifty feet distance (being unable to obtain a greater distance after having opened all my rooms in a straight line), was not wholly exhausted. Crystal-poles and magnets were felt by them at the same distance, and, indeed at the instant I applied them toward the Sensitives present. You perceive, from, these facts, that the Od possesses an uncommonly far-reaching radiation, the compass of which may be forth like that of light, into infinity. Consequently, we drag constantly after us on our fingers, toes and limbs, immense tails of rays, emitted from us, but invisible to us; being surrounded, moreover, as material and living beings, by a shining atmosphere which is carried along whenever we move. I have heard oftentimes, in the dark room, the remark uttered by those present, that my head was surrounded by an aureola that I was wrapt in a saint-like lustre. And, unmistakably, the mythus is derived directly from that phenomenon, which was, indeed, thousands of years ago observed in the Orient, shining as brightly as in our day. This Odic atmosphere, which every one bears about him, emanating from every living individual, is, nevertheless, nowhere the same, being rather different upon each person, in the same way as the effects of small and taste are different, is light is separated into different colours, sound into a scale of tones; that in females differs from that in males; that in a young person from that in an aged man; that in an individual of sanguine temperament from that in one of choleric character; that in a healthy constitution from that in a weak one. Yea, it proves different even in the diseased themselves; in a catarrh from a scarlet fever or a typhus with calor mordax, etc. And all these differences are determined and descried by persons of high sensitiveness; even often by Sensitives, of moderate predisposition. In these circumstances, you get the first hints as to the possibility that some patients- for example, those in a condition of extreme sensibility- may be able to mark the approach of their physician, when healthy persons would be still unable to anticipate his coming; that some others, at the first meeting with certain people, acquire an invincible aversion to them, and for some others as strong a predilection; that beasts of prey and dogs may recognise the trace of their game on a single leaf on which the latter has set its foot when running and many similar things beside, which would seem to be miraculous, until the physical wires are discovered by which they are connected quite regularly and simply with the rest of the material world. But I should surpass the limits I have set to myself, if I should enter into an explanation of the higher relations of Od, I shall here, then, take my leave of you.

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You now know, as to its exterior feature, the manifestation of what I have called Od. It is a dynamid, nearly related and analogous to those which science is already acquainted with. It embraces a separate group of phenomena in nature, though imponderable, yet observable by the senses; occurrences for which we had, till now, neither measure nor reagents, except the human nerves; and even that only under the peculiar circumstance of sensitive irritability. The reason why it has escaped scientific researches hitherto, nay, why it was verbally and obstinately repulsed and excluded from science, is to be found in the total want of any general Odoscope, or Odometer, accessible to all the world, and wherewith its existence would have been easily shown to every eye. And the reason why such an Odoscope has not yet been provided for, is to be derived from the condition of this dynamid, to wit, from its faculty of pervading everything, and of being nowhere crowded, from its want of susceptibility of condensation, by which alone it could be universally seen. For heat, electricity and light, there are, to a certain degree, insulators; but I have not yet been able to contrive any forth. From it is derived Wodan, in the ancient German, expressing the notion of an all-pervading power; it is changed in several idioms of the German into Wodan, Odin etc.; everywhere signifying a power penetrating everything at last is personified as Odin, a deity of the ancient Germans. Od is therefore, the vocal expression of a dynamid, subtly pervading and streaming with an irresistible force through everything in nature. If we had been gifted by nature with a particular sense for Od as precise and distinct as those for the perception of light and sound, we should be standing on a far higher scale of knowledge; we could discern between truth and deception by means of that all pervading faculty, incomparably more easily and more certainly; we could see, as people are wont to say, to the very heart of our fellow creatures. Tallyrand, would be unable any longer to abuse language, to conceal his thoughts, and we should become, beings of a far higher and nobler description. It is easily to be proved, that, fitted out with a sense of Od, we should be a kind of angels, and that we require nothing else but that faculty to raise us immediately to a higher scale of morality without even the necessity of increasing our intelligence. All-wisdom, that, wished to create only erring men, refuses what, if granted, would have made us equal to demi-gods.

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