There are great and small minds for a certainty, measurable by the extent and amount of impressions received on the plate in the camera of. the brain during one's life career. The impressions are made as a photograph is made.
What is revelation? Is it something new? No, it is a showing forth again. There is nothing new under the sun. If there were anything new, it would not be true, because truth is from everlasting to everlasting. A man coins himself into his labor; turns his day; his strength; his affection into some product, which remains as the visible sign of his power; to protect that, to secure that to him, to secure his past self to his future self, is the object of all government and self-government. Biology is the science and philosophy of life phenomena in material organisms, a term which applies with equal force to all phenomena of life or soul expression from the lowest to the highest organism - the vegetable, the man, the infinite universe of spirit and matter. The words spirit and soul are ancient terms, used to signify the vital principle or flame, the animating power of life, a principle or force that vivifies atomic life - brings form into shape. All of nature's laws are general. If progress can be claimed in one phase of her realm, it must be conceded in all. This is a principle to be applied to all opinions; all conditions; all beliefs. A revision is ever necessary. Keep pace with new evidence.
There is hardly a thinking man to-day but will concede to almost any kind of a proposition in the way of new discoveries, as long as it is inside the boundaries of intelligence and reason. There are persons so sensitive to the very atmosphere, that not only thought waves from other minds can be intelligently received by them, but the air itself seems to become a reservoir of knowledge to them, from which they derive information of matters and things that are taking place, or have taken place, far and near, of which they have gained no possible idea from external means. Two students had a lively friendship for each other. After the completion of their studies, their destiny separated them, but they did not cease to retain their cordial relations. Each entered upon the practice of medicine. One night, after the lapse of several years, one of them was the prey of an impression against which he struggled in vain. He seemed to hear a voice that told him that his friend was in a city near to him; that he was ill and in danger of death, and that he was sending to him his last farewell. He was so much moved by the thought, that on the morrow he went to the city, all the time feeling that he was acting somewhat absurdly.
He found his old comrade in a hotel at which, while on a journey, he had been obliged to stop on account of illness, and where he was then, in fact, in the agonies of death. "Ah!" said the sick man, as he saw his friend, "so you did hear the call that I sent to you mentally? Yesterday evening I became convinced that my end was near. I thought earnestly of you and, although I had not informed you where I was, I was still sure that you would come." The position and reputation of the survivor, who tells this story, are such as to make it impossible to believe that he is in error, or has any intention to deceive either himself or others. As nothing is known about the nature of the soul, it would be impossible to conceive what the state of the soul is at such a time. The fact that a person may cease to exhibit any sign whatever of life and yet not be dead, proves that the soul is an independent thing. A startling psychological experience was the fatal dynamite explosion in the Coney mine, near Skykomish. One of the two men killed was R. W. Robinson. At precisely the time he was stunned by the concussion, his young wife, sleeping in Kenton, had a vivid dream of her husband being killed in an explosion.
She awoke in great agitation and was so greatly impressed by the vision, that she aroused her mother, Mrs. Jones, and told her of the occurrence. In spite of all assurance to the contrary, the young wife insisted that her husband had been killed; and it was in the midst of her lamentations that a message was brought from Skykomish, telling briefly of the accident. Mr. Robinson lived three hours before internal hemorrhage caused death; and during a part of that time his mind was deliriously active. It was then, undoubtedly, that the vigorous horror and imagery of his own mind was transmitted to the sensitive brain of his wife. All things which exist, whether mineral, vegetable, animal or spiritual, have certain qualities which are recognizable by one or more of our senses - either when in a mental or somnambulistic condition, and it is the God principle, or the portion of God in everything, that enables our senses to recognize them. If this principle were not in them, they could not exist. The physical eye, when in a somnambulistic condition reveals facts that the natural eye cannot compass, for it not only peers into the secret recesses of the natural world, but it also mounts into the regions of spiritual existence.
Man's soul exists not only while it finds expression through the human form, but also continues to exist after the form no longer serves as a medium for its manifestation. The spiritual realm is simply that territory which is unseen by fleshy eyes; un-perceived, indeed, by the external senses. Remember, while to mortal ears sound ceases at thirty-eight thousand vibrations per second, such waves may speak in thunder tones to immortals. The vast zone lying between thirty-eight thousand and three hundred and ninety-six trillion waves per second may be truly the sphere of souls, in which darkness, silence and death are unknown. It is a silly thing to believe that the grave ends all usefulness. Death - so-called - which John Stuart Mill defines as "A mere cessation of the stimulus of the sensible world," clothes us with a more subtle, pervasive and beautiful corporeality. To "the land of souls," as Byron called it, we all migrate sooner or later. The migration, we may believe, is a change of corporeal costume, rather than a long journey to a distant land. Many, and perhaps most, people possess to a greater or less degree that interior sense termed the power of vision.
In proportion as man has failed to recognize himself as a living soul, he has become subject to the limitations of sense; unable to accept immortality. Those in the primary grades of individual evolution cannot comprehend things of great import. No words of explanation can avail until development makes it possible. Herbert Spencer says: "Experience is the sole origin of knowledge." We infer that, without experience, there can be no knowledge on any subject. It is fortunate for the human intellect that so many problems are yet to be settled. There is something to do in future ages.
ref. Hypnotism and Suggestion by E. Virgil Neal and Charles S. Clerk