The spirit-rapper; an autobiography

I had spent my time, since leaving college, in literary ease and scientific pursuits. I had had few strong or violent passions to trouble me, and few things had wounded me very deeply. I had had, it is true, my little romances, but not being of a sentimental turn, and having a strong constitution and most excellent health, they had hardly rippled the surface of the ordinarily smooth current of my life. I had pursued science as a pastime. I took an easy, pleasant interest in it, but had no passion for it. I had no enthusiasm, and found in the pursuit only a gentle excitement, as in reading one of James’s novels, which, by the by, are the best of all novels, for you can take them up or lay them down when you please. Spare me, I always say, those much-be-praised works of fiction which deal with strong and violent passions, which produce in the reader a painfully intense interest, and which, when you once begin reading them, you cannot lay down till you have read to the end. I avoid reading such a novel, as I avoid a night’s debauch.

But now a change came over me. I became restless, and had an intense longing to explore the secrets of things, and to look within the veil with which nature kindly shrouds her laboratory. I longed to make myself acquainted with the primal elements of being, and to be able to command them; I burned to enlarge not only my knowledge, but my forces. I would be able to raise the tempest on the deep, to fly through the air, to wield the lightning, to leave and enter my body at will, to succor my friends or overwhelm my enemies at a distance. I would read the stars, comprehend their influences, and command their courses. I envied the old Chaldean sages, the mighty magicians of the East, and the wizards and weird sisters of the North. Why should it not be literally true that mind is omnipotent over matter? Is not man called the lord of this lower creation? Why then should he fear, or not be able to exercise his lordship? Had we not seen the wonders of science? Had not man learned to make the lightnings his steeds, and flames of fire his ministers? What are the mighty forces of nature? May not man seize them, use them, and wield their might at his pleasure?

Such thoughts were new to me, still more new were those intense longings. The horizon of human power seemed to enlarge around me, and I seemed to rise in the majesty and might of my nature. I was becoming, as it were, a new man. The ethereal fire within had hitherto slumbered. It was now kindled, and its flames aspired to their native heaven. I would no longer be the puny thing I had been. Henceforth I would be a man; a man in the full and lofty sense of the word. Now suddenly my soul seemed to grow, and to become too large for my body, against which it beat as the prisoner beats his head against the walls of his prison-house. I knew not then the source or nature of these feelings, and I cherished them as precious intimations of my affinity with the Origin and Source of all things. At times I was elated; my eye glowed with an unwonted fire, and sparkled with an unearthly brilliancy; my step was elastic, and my whole frame seemed to have received new youth and buoyancy, and to be in some measure withdrawn from the ordinary laws of gravitation. It seemed as if all the great forces of nature flowed into me, and become subject to my will. Nothing was impossible to me.