William Crookes

The mind is instinctively impressed with the dignity of the idea of the evolution of the soul, which, with its corollary, the eminence of God, makes the divinity of man a fact in nature.

section two chapters four and five of elementary philosophy by l w rogers this librivox recording is in the public domain life after bodily death one of the really remarkable facts of modern life is the disinclination to accept at apparent value the scientific and other evidence there is to prove that consciousness persists after death of the physical body there is in existence a large amount of such evidence and much of it is offered by scientists of the highest standing and yet the average man continues to speak of the subject as though nothing about it had yet been definitely learned it is the tendency of the human mind to adjust itself very slowly to the truth as it is discovered sometimes a generation passes away between the discovery and the general acceptance of a great truth when we recall the intense opposition to the introduction of the steam driven boats and vehicles and the slowness with which the world settles down to any radical change in its methods of thinking it will perhaps seem less remarkable that the truth about the life after bodily death has waited so long for general recognition the evidence upon which a belief in the continuity of consciousness is based is of two kinds that furnished by the physical science and that furnished by the psychic science together they make a very complete case the printed evidence of the first division physical science is voluminous in addition to that gathered by the society for physical research there are the researches and experiments by the scientists of england france and italy among whom are the crooks lodge flammarion and lombroso crooks was a pioneer in the work of studying the human consciousness and tracing its activities beyond the change called death all of that keenness of intellect and great scientific knowledge which has enabled him to make so many valuable discoveries and inventions and has won for him world-wide fame were brought to bear upon the subject and for a period of four years he patiently investigated and experimented many illustrated articles prepared by him fully describing his work were published at the time in the journal of science of which he was then the editor three vital points in psychic research were established by sir william crookes one was that there is psychic force he demonstrated its existence by levitation he showed next that the force is directed by intelligence by various clever experiments he obtained most conclusive evidence of that fact he then demonstrated that the intelligence directing the force is not that of living people crookes also went exhaustively into the subject of materialization and here again he was remarkably successful he was the first scientist to photograph the materialized human form and engage in direct conversation with the person who thus returned from the mysterious life beyond this evidence from the camera must be regarded as particularly interesting it was received with much amazement at the time but that was before we had revised our erroneous ideas about the nature of matter and before the day of liquid air materialization is no longer a startling idea for that is precisely what liquid air is a condensation of invisible matter to the point where it becomes tangible and can be weighed measured seen and otherwise known to the physical senses All these things Sir William Crookes did upon his own premises and under the most rigid scientific conditions.

all the methods and mechanism known to modern science were employed and he finally announced his complete satisfaction and acceptance of the genuineness of the phenomena observed as sir william crux was the earliest sir oliver lodge was the latest of the famous scientists who have taken up the investigation of the continuity of consciousness in a lecture upon the subject before the society for the advancement of science he declared not only that the subject of life after physical death was one which science might legitimately and profitably investigate but that the existence of an invisible realm had been established he declared the continent of an invisible world had been discovered and added already a band of daring investigators have landed on its treacherous but promising shores different scientists make a specialty of certain kinds of psychic investigation and while crux made a detailed and careful study of materialization lodge has given equally painstaking efforts to investigations by the use of that class of sensitives known as mediums a medium is not necessarily a clairvoyant and is usually not clairvoyant a person in whose body the etheric matter easily separates from the physical matter is a medium and can readily be utilized as a sort of telephone between the visible and the invisible planes a medium is an abnormal person and is a good medium in proportion to the degree of abnormality if the etheric matter of the body is easily extruded the physical body readily falls into the trance condition and the mechanism of conversation can be operated by the so-called dead person who has temporarily taken possession of it in such cases it is not the medium who speaks for the living dead communicator he is speaking directly of himself but he may often do it with great difficulty and not always succeed in accurately expressing the thought he has in mind he may have to contend with other thoughts moods and emotions than his own and to those who understand something of his difficulty it is not strange that such communications are frequently unsatisfactory it is not often that an analogy can be found that will give a physical plain comprehension of a superphysical condition but perhaps a faint understanding may be had by thinking of a party-line telephone that any one of a dozen people may use at any moment he can succeed in getting possession of it a listener attempting to communicate with one of them may find that several others are constantly switching in much to his confusion if a distinction of voices due to sound were eliminated and then a stenographic record were to be made of all words reaching the listener he would find that it would often be fragmentary and trivial that would not however prove that the conversation did not come from living beings nor that there was not at least one intelligent person among them that scientists engaged in psychic research have similar experiences proves nothing more it seems to be a common opinion that the evidential value of such psychic communications even under the direction of a skillful scientist cannot be very great but there are ways of knowing it is not at all difficult for the investigator to confine his work not only to incidents unknown to the medium but to scientific facts which the medium cannot possibly comprehend it is a matter of common knowledge that mediums are usually people without technical scientific knowledge some of them have some degree of education and some of them are illiterate some of the most celebrated belong to the peasant class of europe let us suppose that sir oliver lodge is about to attempt to communicate with a scientist who has passed on to join the living dead he will ask technical scientific questions that nobody but a scientist can answer and that the medium can by no possibility even understand when they are answered or suppose he gets a communication from the medium's hand signed by a great author the living dead man writes a criticism let us say of some new book and does it in his characteristic style full of the power of keen analysis and sound literary judgment surely nobody can believe that the medium is producing such things on her own account if she could do so she would not be earning her living as a medium but the scientists do not stop there we often hear the expression cross correspondence just what do they mean by that and in what way does it prove the personal identity of a dead man who is communicating the principle may be illustrated by the hotel clerk's method sometimes a guest leaves a sum of money with the clerk and he wishes to be perfectly sure of his identity when he returns to claim it he requests the guest to put his signature on a card then he tears the card in two gives him one piece and keeps the other that gives him a double proof of identity when he comes for his money he must first give his name and then produce the piece of card that fits into the ragged edge of the piece the clerk has retained the two together making the whole and restoring the signature it is one of the simplest but most satisfactory proofs possible neither piece of that card alone is intelligible if one piece should be lost and others should find it nobody could read it or make anything of it nobody could guess the name unless he had the other piece he only knows about the part he holds he may be a thief and may earnestly desire to use what he has found to defraud but he is helpless because he has only one of the two parts it requires to make an intelligible whole this is the principle involved in identity by cross correspondence part of a message is written through one medium and part through another medium at another time in another place and neither part presents a complete statement or has coherence until it is fitted in to the other part and that prevents a medium who is dishonest from manufacturing a story that may be more or less plausible we are by no means wholly dependent upon scientific investigation for evidence that the dead still live hundreds of people are sufficiently sensitive to have some personal knowledge of the matter the number is far beyond what it appears to be for two reasons one is that the average person fears ridicule and keeps his own counsel about his occult experience the other is the feeling that communications from departed relatives are too sacred and personal for public discussion tens of thousands of people have seen demonstrations at spiritualistic seances which while possessing little evidential value from the scientific viewpoint nevertheless have a legitimate place in the great mass of psychic phenomena but more convincing is the evidence furnished in hundreds of homes where some member of the family acts as automatic writer or medium the most convincing evidence is not always scientific evidence what can be more convincing than the evidence furnished in one's home by members of the family there is much such evidence obtained both through mediums and by automatic writing automatic writing that is the control of the hand of a living person to record the thoughts of another who has lost the physical body is perhaps one of the least objectionable ways in which communications have come from the astral world and to it we are indebted for some useful books with interesting accounts of the life in the unseen regions here of course as elsewhere discrimination must be used for the wise and foolish the useful and useless are to be found side by side in accepting or rejecting one must use his common sense just as he does on this plane in separating the valuable from the worthless in such matters we should not lose sight of the fact that the living dead are unchanged in intellect and morality the genius here is the genius there and the living fool is not different from the dead one it is often those who know the least who are the most anxious to tell it and the medium or automatic writer sometimes gives them the opportunity consequently we get many foolish communications and an enormous amount of commonplace platitude is delivered at seances but it is equally true that unquestionable proof of personal identity is sometimes secured there is much valuable non-scientific evidence that the consciousness survives the loss of the physical body and it frequently comes from sources that ensure respectful attention

You know what? It sucks to be bored.

After a period of convalescence, Nikola Tesla was next enrolled at the Higher Real Gymnasium in Karlovac in 1873, where in accordance with his father's wish for Tesla to continue the family profession, he was enlisted in classes at the local seminary.

However, Tesla's true desire was to learn everything he could about electricity, a passion ignited by an inspirational physics teacher who taught him about the radiometer invented by British scientist William Crookes, a device that powered a vacuum bulb with energy produced by four rapidly spinning tinfoil vanes.

This roused Tesla to conduct some of his first experiments with batteries, induction coils, and electrostatic generators.

Yet Tesla would have to put some of his projects on hold after again falling seriously ill with cholera upon his return home to Gospic, causing the young prodigy to be bedridden for over nine months and to experience several close shaves with death.

And certain prominent men became attached to it and became believers in it.

There was a great scientist called Sir William Crookes.

He was a great chemist.

The Crookes Laboratories get their name from him.

Sir William Crookes was an undoubtedly unusually able scientist.

He became a firm believer in this.

The same applies, as you know, to Sir Oliver Lodge, who was a great scientist, a physicist.

The deflection is caused in the same manner as with cathode rays, but the direction of the deflection is reversed.

It is the same as for the canal rays of the Crookes tubes.

Two, the beta rays are less absorbable as a whole than the preceding ones.

They are deflected by a magnetic field in the same manner and direction as cathode rays.

But hitherto the existence of electric charges uncombined with matter has been unknown.

In the study of the emission of the beta rays of radium, we are therefore led to make use of the theory which is in vogue for the study of cathode rays.

In this ballistic theory, formulated by Sir William Crookes, since developed and completed by Professor J.J. Thomson, the cathode rays consist of extremely minute particles which are hurled from the cathode with great velocity and which are charged with negative electricity.

We might similarly conceive that radium sends into space negatively electrified particles.

Footnote 26.

By this, M. Poincaré appears to mean a radiometer in which the vanes are not entirely free to move, as in the radiometer of Crookes, but are suspended by one or two threads, as in the instrument devised by Professor Poynting.

Editor More recently, Messrs. Nichols and Hull have undertaken experiments on this point.

They have measured not only the pressure, but also the energy of the radiation by means of a special bolometer.

Subheading 5.

The X-Rays It appears today quite probable that the X-rays should be classed among the phenomena which have their seat in the luminous ether.

Doubtless it is not necessary to recall here how, in December 1895, Roentgen, having wrapped in black paper a Crookes tube in action, observed that a fluorescent platinocyanide of barium screen placed in the neighborhood had become visible in the dark, and that a photographic plate had received an impress.

The rays which come from the tube in conditions now well known are not deviated by a magnet, and as M. Curie and M. Sanak have conclusively shown, they carry no electric charge.