CHAPTER VII
Supernatural Science
The application of modern science to supernaturalism, or of thesupernatural to modern science, is one of the distinctive featuresof recent literature. Ghostly fiction took a new and definite turnwith the rapid advance in scientific knowledge and investigation inthe latter part of the nineteenth century, for the work of Darwin,Spencer, Huxley, and their co-laborers did as much to quicken thoughtin romance as in other lines. Previous literature had made but scanteffort to reflect even the crude science of the times, and whatwas written was so unconvincing that it made comparatively littleimpress. Almost the only science that Gothic fiction dealt with, toany noticeable extent, was associated with alchemy and astrology. Thealchemist sought the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life whilethe astrologer tried to divine human destiny by the stars. Zofloyadabbled in diabolic chemistry, and Frankenstein created a man-monsterthat was noteworthy as an incursion into supernatural biology, yetthey are almost isolated instances. Now each advance in science hashad its reflection in supernatural fiction and each phase of researchcontributes plot material, while some of the elements once consideredwholly of the devil are now scientific. The sorcerer has given placeto the bacteriologist and the botanist, the marvels of discovery havedisplaced miracles as basis for unearthly plot material, and it isfrom the laboratory that the ghostly stories are now evolved, ratherthan from the vault and charnel-room as in the past. Science not onlyfurnishes extraordinary situations for curdling tales, but it is anexcellent hook to hang supernatural tales upon, for it gives an excusefor believing anything, however incredible. Man is willing to acceptthe impossible, if he be but given a modern excuse for it. He willswallow the wildest improbability if the bait be labeled science orpsychical research. No supernaturalism is incredible if it is expressedin technical terminology, and no miracle will be rejected if itssetting be in a laboratory. One peculiar thing about modern scientificthought in its reaction upon fiction is that it is equally effective inrealism, such as shown in the naturalistic novels of Zola, the playsof Brieux and others, and in supernaturalism, as in the work of H. G.Wells, for instance, where the ghostly is grafted on to cold realism.
The transition from the sorcerer, the wizard, the warlock of olderfiction to the scientist in the present has been gradual. The sorcererrelied wholly upon supernatural, chiefly diabolic, agencies for hispower, while the wizard of the modern laboratory applies his knowledgeof molecules and gases to aid his supermortal forces. Modern scienceitself seems miraculous, so its employment in ghostly stories isbut natural. The _Arabian Nights' Tales_ seem not more marvelousthan the stories of modern investigations. Hawthorne's narrativesstand between the old and the new types of science, his Rappaccini,Dr. Heidigger, Gaffer Dolliver, Septimius Felton and his rivals insearch for the elixir of youth, as well as the husband who sought toefface the birthmark from his young wife's cheek, being related intheme to the older conventional type and in treatment to the new.Poe's scientific stories are more modern in method and material, andin fact he made claim of originality of invention for the idea ofmaking fiction plausible by the use of scientific laws. His _Descentinto the Maelstrom_, _MS. Found in a Bottle_, and other stories werenovel in the manner in which they united the scientifically real andthe supernatural. _The Pit and the Pendulum_, with its diabolicalmachinery, is akin to the modern mechanistic stories rather than toanything that had preceded it. Poe paved the way for H. G. Wells's useof the ghostly mechanical and scientific narratives, as his storiesof hypnotism with its hideous aftermath of horror must have givensuggestion for Arthur Machen's revolting stories of physical operationswith unearthly consequences. An example of the later manifestations ofsupernaturalism in connection with science is in Sax Rohmer's talesof Fu-Manchu, the Chinese terror, the embodied spirit of an ancientevil that entered into him at his birth, because of his nearness to anold burying-ground, and who, to his unholy alliance unites a wizardknowledge of modern science in its various aspects. With every power ofcunning and intellect intensified, with a technical knowledge of allmeans with which to fight his enemies, he ravages society as no meresorcerer of early fiction could do.
The modern stories of magic have a skillful power of suggestiveness,being so cunningly contrived that on the surface they seem plausibleand natural, with nothing supernatural about them. Yet behind thisseeming simplicity lurks a mystery, an unanswered question, an unsolvedproblem. W. W. Jacobs's _The Monkey's Paw_, for instance, is one ofthe most effectively terrible stories of magic that one could conceiveof. The shriveled paw of a dead monkey, that is believed by some togive its possessor the right to have three wishes granted, becomes thesymbol of inescapable destiny, the Weird, or Fate of the old tragedy,though the horrors that follow upon the wishes' rash utterance _may_be explained on natural grounds. The insidious enigma is what makes thestory unforgettable. Barry Pain's _Exchange_ might be given as anotherexample of problematic magic that owes its power to elusive mystery.The witch-woman, the solitary Fate, who appears to persons offeringthem such dreadful alternatives, might be conceived of as the figmentof sick brains, yet the reader knows that she is not.
Richard Middleton's _The Coffin Merchant_ seems simple enough on thesurface, and the literal-minded could explain the occurrence on normalgrounds, yet the story has a peculiar haunting supernaturalism. Acoffin merchant claims to be able to know who among passers-by will diesoon, and hands a man an advertisement for a coffin, asserting that hewill need it. The man later goes to the shop to rebuke the merchantfor his methods but ends by signing a contract for his own funeral. Onleaving, he shakes hands with the dealer, after which he unconsciouslyputs his hand to his lips, feeling a slight sting. He dies thatnight,--of what? Of poison, of fear, of supernatural suggestion, or inthe natural course of events? The series called _The Strange Cases ofDr. Stanchion_, by Josephine Daskam Bacon, shows instances occurringamong the clientele of a famous brain specialist, where the materialistmight put aside the explanation of the supernatural, only to beconfronted by still greater problems. The relation between insanity andghostliness in recent fiction is significant and forms the crux of manya story since Poe. Mrs. Bacon's _The Miracle_, for instance, has itssetting in an insane asylum, but the uncanny happenings almost convinceus of the sanity of the patients and the paranoia of the outsiders. Wecome to agree with the specialist that every person is more or less aparanoiac, and none more so than he who scoffs at the supernatural.
Another aspect of the transfer of magic in modern fiction to ascientific basis is that of second sight or supernatural vision. Thismotif still retains all its former effect of the unearthly, perhapsgaining more, since the scientific twist seems to give the idea thatthe ghostly power resides in the atoms and molecules and gases andmachines themselves, rather than in the person who manipulates them,which is more subtly haunting in its impression. Second sight has beenused as a means for producing uncanny effects all along the line offiction. Defoe even used it in a number of his hoax pamphlets, as wellas in his _History of Duncan Campbell_, and folk-lore is full of suchstories, especially in the Highlands.
The modern use of supernatural vision is based apparently on naturalscience, which makes the weird power more striking. _The Black Patch_,by Randolph Hartley, tells of an experiment in optics that produces astrange result. Two students exchange left eyeballs for the purposeof studying the effects of the operation, leaving the right eye ineach case unimpaired. When the young men recover from the operationand the bandages are removed, they discover that an extraordinarything has taken place. The first, while seeing with his right eyehis own surroundings as usual, sees also with his left--which is hisfriend's left, that is--what that friend is looking at with his righteye, thousands of miles away. The severing of the optic nerve has notdisturbed the sympathetic vision between the companion eyes, so thiscurious double sight results. In a quarrel arising from this peculiarsituation, the first man kills the second, and sees on his left eye thehideous image of his own face distorted with murderous rage, as hi
sfriend saw it, which is never to be effaced, because the companion eyeis dead and will see no more.
Another instance of farsightedness is told in John Kendrick Bangs's_The Speck on the Lens_, where a man has such an extraordinary lefteye that when he looks through a lens he sees round the world, and getsa glimpse of the back of his own head which he thinks is a speck on thelens. Only two men in the world are supposed to have that power.
_The Remarkable Case of Davidson's Eyes_, by H. G. Wells, is aninteresting example of this new scientific transference of magicvision. Davidson is working in a laboratory which is struck bylightning, and after the shock he finds himself unable to visualizehis surroundings, but instead sees the other side of the world, ships,a sea, sands. The explanation given by a professor turns on learnedtheories of space and the Fourth Dimension. He thinks that Davidson,in stooping between the poles of the electro-magnet, experienced aqueer twist in his mental retinal elements through the sudden forceof the lightning. As the author says: "It sets one dreaming of theoddest possibilities of intercommunication in the future, of spendingan intercalary five minutes on the other side of the world, of beingwatched in our most secret operations by unexpected eyes." Davidson'svision comes back queerly, for he begins to see the things around himby piecemeal, as apparently the two fields of vision overlap for a time.
Brander Matthews in _The Kinetoscope of Time_ introduces an instrumentwith eyepieces that show magic vision. The beholder sees scenes fromthe past, from literature as well as from life, has glimpses of Salomedancing, of Esmerelda, witnesses the combat between Achilles andHector, the tourney between Saladin and the Knight of the Leopard. Themagician offers to show him his future--for a price--but he is wiseenough to refuse.
Magic views of the future constitute an interesting aspect of thesupernatural vision in modern stories. _The Lifted Veil_, by GeorgeEliot, is an account of a man who has prophetic glimpses of his fate,which seem powerless to warn him, since he marries the woman whohe knows will be his doom, and he is aware that he will die alone,deserted even by his servants, yet cannot help it. He sees himselfdying, with the attendants off on their own concerns, knows everydetail beforehand, but unavailingly. This suggests _Amos Judd_, byJ. A. Mitchell, which is a curious instance of the transition stage ofsecond sight, related both to the old sorcerer type and to the newscientific ideas. Amos Judd, so called, is the son of an Indian rajah,sent out of his country because of a revolution, and brought up inignorance of his birth in a New England farmhouse. Vishnu, in the farpast, has laid his finger on the brow of one of the rajah's ancestors,thereby endowing him with the gift of magic vision, which descendsonce in a hundred years to some one of his line. Amos Judd therefore,can see the future by pictures, beholding clearly everything that willhappen to him. He sees himself lying dead at a desk, on which stands acalendar marking the date, November 4th. His friends persuade him tolive past the date, and they think all is well, till one day while heis on a visit to a strange house he is killed by an assassin. They findhim lying at a desk, with an out-of-date calendar beside him, markingNovember 4th.
Barry Pain endows a bulldog with the power to foretell the future, toreveal disaster and oppose it. Zero, in the story by that name, is acommon bulldog greatly valued because he has a supernatural knowledgeof any evil that threatens those he loves, and by his canine sagacityhe forestalls fate. In the end, in protecting his master's littlechild, he is bitten by a mad dog, whose coming he has supernaturallyforeseen, and he commits suicide as the only way out of the difficulty.Arthur Machen, in _The Bowmen and Others_, tells varied stories ofsupernatural vision associated with the war.
_The Door in the Wall_, by H. G. Wells, depicts a man who in hisdreamy childhood wanders into a secret garden where he is shown thebook of his past and future, but who afterwards is unable to find thedoor by which he enters, though he seeks it often. Later in life,at several times when he is in a special haste to reach some placefor an important appointment, he sees the door, but does not enter.Finally he goes in to his death. This is an instance of the suggestivesupernaturalism associated with dreams and visions.
The use of mirrors in supernatural vision is significant and appearsin a number of ways in modern fiction. Scott's _My Aunt Margaret'sMirror_ is an early instance, where the magician shows the seekera glass wherein she sees what is taking place in another country,sees her husband on his way to the altar with another woman, sees astranger stop the marriage, and witnesses the fatal duel. Hawthornehas used mirrors extensively as symbolic of an inner vision, of a lookinto the realities of the soul. For instance, when poor Feathertop,the make-believe man, the animated scarecrow, looks into the mirrorhe sees not the brave figure the world beholds in him, but the thingof sticks and straw, the sham that he is, as the minister shrinksfrom the mirrored reflection of the black veil, symbol of mysterythat he wears. Hawthorne elsewhere speaks of Echo as the voice of thereflection in a mirror, and says that our reflections are ghosts ofourselves. Mr. Titbottom, in George William Curtis's _Prue and I_,who has the power of seeing into the souls of human beings by meansof his magic spectacles and catching symbolic glimpses of what theyare instead of what they appear to be, beholds himself in a mirrorand shrinks back aghast from the revelation of his own nature. BarryPain's story, referred to in another connection, shows a mirror whereina supernatural visitant reveals to a young man the supreme moments oflife, his own and those of others, pictures of the highest moments ofecstasy or despair, of fulfillment of dear dreams.
_The Silver Mirror_, by A. Conan Doyle, represents a man alone nightafter night, working with overstrained nerves on a set of books, whosees in an antique mirror a strange scene re-enacted and finds laterthat the glass has once belonged to Mary, Queen of Scots, and thathe has seen the murder of Rizzio. Brander Matthews also has a storyconcerned with re-created images in an old mirror. The looking-glassin fiction seems to be not only a sort of hand conscience, as Markheimcalls it, but a betrayer of secrets, a revealer of the forgotten past,a prophet of the future as well. It is also a strange symbol to showhearts as they are in reality, reflecting the soul rather than thebody. It is employed in diverse ways and is an effective means ofsupernatural suggestion, of ghostly power.
The Fourth Dimension is another motif that seems to interest thewriters of recent ghostly tales. They make use of it in variousways and seem to have different ideas concerning it, but they liketo play with the thought and twist it to their whim. Ambrose Biercehas a collection of stories dealing with mysterious disappearances,in which he tells of persons who are transferred from the known,calculable space to some "non-Euclidean space" where they are lost.In some strange pockets of nowhere they fall, unable to see or to beseen, to hear or to be heard, neither living nor dying, since "in thatspace is no power of life or of death." It is all very mysterious anduncanny. He uses the theme as the basis for a number of short storiesof ghostly power, which offer no solution but leave the mystery in theair. In some of these stories Bierce represents the person as cryingout, and being heard, but no help can go, because he is invisible andintangible, not knowing where he is nor what has happened to him. H. G.Wells, in _The Plattner Case_, which shows an obvious influence ofBierce, gives a similar case. He explains the extraordinary happeningsby advancing the theory that Plattner has changed sides. According tomathematics, he says, we are told that the only way in which the rightand left sides of a solid body can be changed is by taking that bodyclean out of space as we know it, out of ordinary existence, that is,and turning it somewhere outside space. Plattner has been moved outinto the Fourth Dimension and been returned to the world with a curiousinversion of body. He is absent from the world for nine days and hasextraordinary experiences in the Other-World. This happens through anexplosion in the laboratory where he is working, similarly to Wells'sstory of Davidson, where the infringement on the Fourth Dimension isthe result of a lightning stroke.
Mary Wilkins Freeman deals with the Fourth Dimension in _The HallBedroom_, where the boarder drifts off into unknown space, never t
oreturn, from gazing at a picture on the wall, as has happened in thecase of previous occupants of the room. Richard Middleton employsthe same idea in a story of a conjurer who nightly plays a trick inpublic, causing his wife to seem to disappear into space. One night sheactually does so vanish, never to be seen again. Other instances of theform may be found in recent fiction. H. G. Wells uses the theme witha different twist in his _Time Machine_. Here the scientist insiststhat time is the Fourth Dimension, that persons who talk of the matterordinarily have no idea of what it is, but that he has solved it. Heconstructs a machine which enables him to project himself into thefuture or into the past, and sees what will happen or what has happenedin other centuries. He lives years in the space of a few momentsand has amazing adventures on his temporal expeditions. But finallythe Fourth Dimension, which may be thought of as a terrible Fate orinescapable destiny awaiting all who dally with it, gets him too, forhe fails to return from one of his trips. Another story tells of a manwho by drinking quantities of green tea could project himself into theFourth Dimension.
A number of stories of scientific supernaturalism are concerned withglimpses into the future. _The Time Machine_, just mentioned, withits invasions of the unknown space and time, its trips into eternityby the agency of a miraculous vehicle, illustrates the method. Thescientist finds that he can travel backwards or forwards, acceleratingor retarding his speed as he will, and get a section of life in any agehe wishes. He discovers that in the future which he visits many reformshave been inaugurated, preventive medicine established, noxious weedseradicated, and yet strange conditions exist. Mankind has undergonea two-fold involution, the soft conditions of life having caused thehigher classes to degenerate into flabby beings of no strength, whilean underground race has grown up of horrible depraved nature, blindfrom living in subterranean passages, cannibalistic while the othersare vegetarian. The lower classes are like hideous apes, while thehigher are effeminate, relaxed. The traveler escapes a dire fate onlyby rushing to his machine and returning to his own time. Samuel Butlersuggests that machines will be the real rulers in the coming ages, thatman will be preserved only to feed and care for the machines whichwill have attained supernatural sensibility and power. He says thatmechanisms will acquire feelings and tastes and culture, and that manwill be the servant of steel and steam in the future, instead of masteras now; that engines will wed and rear families which men, as slaves,must wait upon.
Frank R. Stockton[197] gives another supernatural scientific glimpseinto the future, showing as impossibilities certain things that havesince come to pass, while some of the changes prophesied as imminentare yet unrealized and apparently far from actualities. Jack London's_Scarlet Plague_ pictures the earth returned to barbarism, since mostof the inhabitants have been swept away by a scourge and the othershave failed to carry on the torch of civilization. H. G. Wells[198]gives account of a tour into futurity, wherein the miracles of modernscience work revolutions in human life, and[199] he satirizes society,showing a topsy-turvy state of affairs in A.D. 2100. His _Dream ofArmageddon_ is a story of futurity wherein a man has continuousvisions of what his experiences will be in another life far in thefuture. That life becomes more real to him than his actual existence,and he grows indifferent to events taking place around him whilerent with emotion over the griefs to come in another age. Of course,Edward Bellamy's _Looking Backward_, with its social and mechanisticmiracles that now seem flat and tame to us, might be said to be thefather of most of these modern prophecies of scientific futurity.Samuel Butler's _Erewhon_ contains many elements of impossibility inrelation to life, and is a satire on society, though perhaps not,strictly speaking, supernatural. These prophecies of the time to comeare in the main intended as social satires, as symbolic analyses ofthe weaknesses of present life. They evince vivid imagination and muchingenuity in contriving the mechanisms that are to transform life, yetthey are not examples of great fiction. Mark Twain reverses the typein his _Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court_, for he shows aman of the present taking part in the life of the far past, managingto parody both mediaevalism and the Yankee character at once. H. G.Wells is particularly interested in studying the unused forces of theworld and fancying what would happen under other conditions. His playof scientific speculation has produced many stories that he does notgreatly value now himself, but which are of interest as showing certaintendencies of fiction.
[197] In _The Great Stone of Sardis_.
[198] In _A Story of Days to Come_.
[199] In _When the Sleeper Wakes_.
* * * * *
Views of other planets form a feature of modern supernaturalism, forthe writer now sets his stories not only on earth, in heaven, and inhell but on other worlds besides. The astrologer of ancient fiction,with his eye fixed ever on the stars, seeking to discern theirinfluence on human destiny, appears no more among us. He has beenreplaced by the astronomer who scans the stars yet with a differentpurpose in fiction. He wishes to find out the life of citizens ofother planets rather than to figure out the fate of mortals on theearth. Many stories of modern times cause new planets to swim into ourliterary ken and describe their citizens with ease. H. G. Wells starshere as elsewhere. In his _War of the Worlds_ he depicts a strugglebetween the earth people and the Martians, in which many supernaturalelements enter. The people of Mars are a repulsive horde of creatures,yet they have wonderful organization and command of resources, andthey conquer the earth to prey upon it. This book has suffered theinevitable parody.[200] In _The Crystal Egg_, Wells describes a curiousglobe in which the gazer can see scenes reflected from Mars. The authorsuggests two theories as to the possibility of this,--either thatthe crystal is in both worlds at once, remaining stationary in oneand moving in the other, and that it reflects scenes in Mars so thatthey are visible on earth, or else that by a peculiar sympathy witha companion globe on the other planet it shows on its surface whathappens in the other world. It is hinted that the Martians have sentthe crystal to the earth in order that they might catch glimpses of ourlife.
[200] In _The War of the Wenuses_, by C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas.
In _The Star_, Wells gives yet another story of the future, of otherplanetary influences. By the passing of a strange star, life on earthis convulsed and conditions radically changed. These conditions areobserved by the astronomers on Mars, who are beings different frommen, yet very intelligent. They draw conclusions as to the amount ofdamage done to the earth, satirizing human theories as to Mars. _TheDays of the Comet_ shows earthly life changed by the passing of acomet, but instead of the destruction described in the other story, thesocial conditions are vastly improved and a millennium is ushered in.Wells[201] makes a voyage to the moon possible by the discovery of asubstance which resists gravity. Other instances might be given, forthere has been no lack of lunar literature, but they are not usuallyworth much.
[201] In _The First Men in the Moon_.
Du Maurier's _The Martian_, which combines the elements ofmetempsychosis, automatic writing, and dream-supernaturalism, with theidea of ghostly astronomy, tells of a supernatural visitant from Mars.The Martian is a young woman whose spirit comes to inhabit a youngman to whom she dictates wonderful books in his dreams. She writesletters to him in a sort of private code, in which she tells of herprevious incarnations on Mars, of the Martians who are extraordinaryamphibious beings, descended from a small sea animal. They have unusualacuteness of senses with an added sixth sense, a sort of orientation,a feeling of a magnetic current, which she imparts to her protege,Barty Joscelyn. Jack London[202] tells a story of interplanetarymetempsychosis, where the central character, a prisoner in San Quentin,finds himself able to will his body to die at times, thus releasinghis spirit to fly through space and relive its experiences in previousincarnations.
[202] In _The Star Rover_.
Barry Pain's _The Celestial Grocery_ is a phantasy of insanity and thesupernatural, with its setting on two planets. It contains a
cab horsethat talks and laughs, and other inversions of the natural. A man istaken on a journey to another world, sees the stars and the earth inspace beneath him, and finds everything different from what he hasknown before. People there have two bodies and send them alternatelyto the wash, though they seldom wear them. The celestial shop sellsnothing concrete, only abstractions, emotions, experiences. One maybuy measures of love, requited or unselfishly hopeless, of politicalsuccess, of literary fame, or of power or what-not. Happiness is ablend, however, for which one must mix the ingredients for himself. Thestory is symbolic of the ideals of earth, with a sad, effective satire.The end is insanity, leaving one wondering how much of it is purephantasy of a mad man's brain or how much actuality. It is reminiscentof Hawthorne's Intelligence Office with its symbolic supernaturalism.
* * * * *
Hypnotism enters largely into the fiction of modern times. Hypnotismmay or may not be considered as supernatural, yet it borders so closelyon to the realm of the uncanny, and is so related to science of to-dayas well as to the sorcery of the past, that it should be considered inthis connection for it carries on the traditions of the supernatural.In its earlier stages hypnotism was considered as distinctly diabolic,used only for unlawful purposes, being associated with witchcraft. Itis only in more recent times that it has been rehabilitated in thepublic mind and thought of as a science which may be used for helpfulends. It is so mysterious in its power that it affords complicationsin plenty for the novelist and has been utilized in various ways.In some cases, as F. Marion Crawford's _The Witch of Prague_, it isassociated still with evil power and held as a black art. Unorna has anunearthly power gained through hypnotism which is more than hypnotic,and which she uses to further her own ends. Strange scientific ideas oflife and of death are seen here, and someone says of her: "You wouldmake a living mummy of a man. I should expect to find him with hishead cut off and living by means of a glass heart and thinking througha rabbit's brain." She embalms an old man in a continuous hypnoticlethargy, recalling him only at intervals to do mechanically the thingsnecessary to prolong life. She is trying to see if she can cause humantissue to live forever in this embalmed state, hoping to learn throughit the secret of eternal life. This, of course, suggests Poe's storiesof the subject, _Mesmeric Revelations_ and _The Facts in the Case ofM. Waldemar_. The latter is one of the most revolting instances ofscientific supernaturalism, for the dying man is mesmerized in themoment of death and remains in that condition, dead, yet undecaying,and speaking, repeating with his horrible tongue the statement, "I amdead." After seven months, further experiments break the spell, andhe, pleading to be allowed to be at peace in death, falls suddenlyaway into a loathsome, liquid putrescence before the eyes of theexperimenters.
_The Portent_, by George MacDonald, is a curious study of hypnoticinfluence, of a woman who is her true self only when in asomnambulistic state. A supernatural connection of soul exists betweenher and a youth born on the same day, and it is only through hishypnotic aid that she gains her personality and sanity. James L. Fordplays with the subject by having a group of persons in an evening partysubmit themselves to be hypnotized in turn, each telling a true storyof his life while in that condition. W. D. Howells combines mesmerismwith spiritualism in his novel,[203] where the seances are really theresult of hypnotism rather than supernatural revelation as the mediumthinks. H. G. Wells has used this theme, as almost every other form ofscientific ghostliness, though without marked success. The prize storyof hypnotism, however, still remains Du Maurier's _Trilby_, for nomesmerist in this fiction has been able to outdo Svengali.
[203] _The Undiscovered Country._
* * * * *
Uncanny chemistry forms the ingredient for many a modern story. Thealchemist was the favored feature of the older supernatural fiction ofscience, and his efforts to discover the philosopher's stone and tobrew the magic elixir have furnished plots for divers stories. He doesnot often waste his time in these vain endeavors in recent stories,though his efforts have not altogether ceased, as we have seen in aprevious chapter. A. Conan Doyle[204] is among the last to treat thetheme, and makes the scientist find his efforts worse than useless,for the research student finds that his discovery of the art of makinggold is disturbing the nice balance of nature and bringing injury tothose he meant to help, so he destroys his secret formula and dies._The Elixir of Youth_ illustrates the transference of power from thesorcerer to the scientist, for the magician that gives the stranger apotion to restore his youth tells him that he is not a sorcerer, not adiabolic agent, but a scientist learning to utilize the forces that areat the command of any intelligence.
[204] In _The Doings of Raffles Haw_.
Barry Pain's _The Love Philter_ is related both to the old and the newtypes of supernatural chemistry. A man loves a woman who doesn't care,so he asks aid of a wise woman, who gives him a potion that will surelywin the stubborn heart. As he lies asleep in the desert, on his wayback, he dreams that his love says to him that love gained by suchmeans is not love, so he pours the liquid on the sand. When he returns,the woman tells him that she has been with him in his dreams and loveshim because he would not claim her wrongly. _Blue Roses_ is another ofhis stories of magic that bring love to the indifferent. _Twilight_,by Frank Danby, is a novel based on the relation between morphia andthe supernatural. A woman ill of nervous trouble, under the influenceof opiates, continually sees the spirit of a woman dead for years,who relives her story before her eyes, so that the personalities arecuriously merged. This inevitably suggests De Quincey's _Confessions ofan English Opium-Eater_ with its dream-wonders, yet it has a power ofits own and the skillful blending of reality with dream-supernaturalismand insanity has an uncanny distinction.
Fu-Manchu, the Chinese wonder-worker in Sax Rohmer's series ofstories bearing that name, is a representative example of the modernuse of chemistry for supernormal effect. He employs all the forcesof up-to-the-minute science to compass his diabolic ends and worksmiracles of chemistry by seemingly natural methods. By a hypodermicinjection he can instantly drive a man to acute insanity incurable saveby a counter-injection which only Fu-Manchu can give, but which asinstantly restores the reason. By another needle he can cause a personto die--to all intents and purposes, at least,--and after the body hasbeen buried for days he can restore it to life by another prick of theneedle. He terrorizes England by his infernal powers, killing off orconverting to slavery the leading intelligences that oppose him.
Stevenson's _Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_ is perhaps the best-knowninstance of chemical supernaturalism. Here the magic drug not onlychanges the body, evolving from the respectable Dr. Jekyll his baserself in the form of Mr. Hyde, enabling him to give rein to his criminalinstincts without bringing reproach on his reputation, but has thesubtle power to fix the personality of evil, so that each time the drugis used Hyde is given a stronger force and Jekyll is weakened. Thisfictive sermon on dual nature, the ascendence of evil over the noblersoul if it be indulged, seems yet an appallingly real story of humanlife. In a similar fashion Arthur Machen uses supernatural chemistrymost hideously in _The Three Impostors_, where a certain powderperverts the soul, making man a sharer in the unspeakable orgies ofancient evil forces.
_The Invisible Man_, by H. G. Wells, shows an unusual application ofchemistry to ghostly fiction that gives a peculiar effect of realitybecause its style is that of scientific realism. By experimentationwith drugs a man finds a combination that will render living tissueabsolutely invisible. When he swallows a portion of it, he cannot beseen. His clothes appear to be walking around by themselves and thecomplications are uncanny. As one may see, the comic possibilitiesare prominent and for a time we laugh over the mystification of thepersons with whom he comes in contact, but soon stark tragedy results.During the man-chase, as the hunted creature seeks to escape, thepeople hear the thud-thud of running steps, watch bloody footprintsform before their eyes, yet see nothing else. Here is a genuine thrillthat
is new in fiction. The man gradually becomes visible, but only indeath is his dreadful figure seen completely again. This modern methodof transferring to science the idea of invisibility so prominent inconnection with ghosts, showing the invisibility as the result of achemical compound, not of supernatural intervention, affecting a livingman not a spirit, makes the effect of supernaturalism more vivid eventhan in the case of ghosts.
These are only suggestions of the varied uses to which chemistry hasbeen put in producing ghostly plots and utilizing in novel ways theconventional motifs of older stories. These themes are more popular nowthan they would have been half a century ago because now the averagereader knows more about scientific facts and is better prepared toappreciate them. A man ignorant of chemistry would care nothing for thethroes of Dr. Jekyll or the complicating experiences of the invisibleman, because he would have slight basis for his imagination to buildupon. Each widening of the popular intelligence and each branch ofscience added to the mental store of the ordinary reader is a distinctgain to fiction.
* * * * *
Supernatural biology looms large in modern fiction, though it is notalways easy to differentiate between the predominance of chemical andbiological motifs. In many cases the two are tangled up together, andas, in the stories of dual personality and invisibility just mentioned,one may not readily say which is uppermost, the biological or thechemical side, for the experiments are of the effects of certain drugsupon living human tissue. There are various similar instances in thefiction of scientific supernaturalism. Hawthorne's _The Birthmark_ isa case of chemical biology, where the husband seeking to remove bypowerful drugs the mark from his wife's cheek succeeds in doing sobut causes her death. Here the supernaturalism is symbolic, suggestedrather than boldly stated, as is usually the case with Hawthorne's work.
A. Conan Doyle in _The Los Amigos Fiasco_ shows supernaturalism basedon the effect of electricity on the body, for the lynchers in trying tokill a man by connecting him with a dynamo succeed in so magnetizinghim that he can't be killed in any way. Sax Rohmer tells one Fu-Manchustory of a mysterious murder committed by means of an imprisoned gasthat escapes from a mummy case and poisons those exposed to it, and, inanother, he introduces a diabolic red insect attracted by the scent ofa poisonous orchid, that bites the marked victim.
Wells's _The Island of Dr. Moreau_ is a ghastly study in vivisection.Two scientists on a remote island with no other human inhabitants tryunspeakable experiments on animals, trying by pruning and grafting andtraining the living tissue to make them human. They do succeed in ameasure, for they teach the beasts to talk and to observe a sort ofjungle law laid down by man, yet the effect is sickening. The animalsare not human and never can be, and these revolting experiments deprivethem of all animal dignity without adding any of the human. In the endthey revert to savagery, becoming even more bestial than before. Themost dreadful biological experiments in recent fiction are described inArthur Machen's volume of short stories, _The House of Souls_. In onestory an operation on the brain enables a victim to "see the great godPan," to have revelations of ancient supernaturalism wherein Pan andthe devil are united in one character. In another, a delicate cuttingof the brain removes the soul,--which takes the form of a wonderfuljewel,--and utterly diabolizes the character. These curious andrevolting stories are advanced instances of scientific diabolism andleave a smear on the mind. They are more horrible than the creation ofFrankenstein's man-monster, for here moral monsters are evolved.
Medicated supernaturalism associated with prenatal influence occursin various stories where a supernormal twist is given because of someevent out of the ordinary. Ambrose Bierce's _The Eyes of the Panther_,a story of a young woman who is a panther for part of the time as aresult of a shock, is associated with the snake nature of Elsie Venner.Barry Pain's _The Undying Thing_ is one of the most horrible of suchcomplications, for because of a mother's fright over a pack of wolvesa monster is born, neither wolf nor human, neither animal nor man,neither mortal nor immortal. It is hidden in a secret cave to die,yet lives on, though not living, to fulfil a curse upon the ancienthouse. A. Conan Doyle's _The Terror of Blue John Gap_ is a story of amonstrous animal, like a bear yet bigger than an elephant, that ravagesthe countryside. The theory for its being is that it is a survival, ina subterranean cave, of a long-extinct type, from prehistoric times,that comes out in its blindness to destroy. There are other examples ofsupernormal animals in modern fiction, yet these suffice to illustratethe _genre_.
* * * * *
Botany furnishes its ghostly plots in fiction as well as other branchesof science, for we have plant vampires and witches and devils. Treesand flowers are highly psychic and run a gamut of emotions. Hawthorneshows us supernatural plants in several of his novels and stories,such as the mysterious plant growing from a secret grave, which has astrange poisonous power, or the flowers from Gaffer Dolliver's gardenthat shine like jewels and lend a glow to the living face near them,when worn on a woman's breast. In _Rappaccini's Daughter_ the gardenis full of flowers of subtle poison, so insidious that their venomhas entered into the life of the young girl, rendering her a livingmenace to those around her. She is the victim of her father's daemonicexperiments in the effects of poison on the human body, and her kissmeans death. Algernon Blackwood[205] tells of the uncanny power ofmotion and emotion possessed by the trees, where the forest exercises amagnetic force upon human beings sympathetic to them, going out aftermen and luring them to their fate. He describes the cedar as friendlyto man and attempting but in vain to protect him from the creepingmalignant power of the forest.
[205] In _The Man whom the Trees Loved_.
Fu-Manchu, Sax Rohmer's Chinese horror, performs various experimentsin botany to further his dreadful ends. He develops a species ofpoisonous fungi till they become giant in size and acquire certainpowers through being kept in the darkness. When a light is turned onthem, the fungi explode, turning loose, on the men he would murder,fumes that drive them mad. From the ceiling above are released ripespores of the giant Empusa, for the air in the second cellar, beingsurcharged with oxygen, makes them germinate instantly. They fall likepowdered snow upon the victims and the horrible fungi grow magically,spreading over the writhing bodies of the mad-men and wrapping themin ghostly shrouds. In _The Flower of Silence_ he describes a strangeorchid that has the uncanny habit of stinging or biting when it isbroken or roughly handled, sending forth a poison that first makes aman deaf then kills him. Fu-Manchu introduces this flower into thesleeping-rooms of those he wishes to put out of the way, and sends theminto eternal silence. _The Flowering of the Strange Orchid_, by H. G.Wells, is the story of a murderous plant, a vampire that kills men inthe jungle, and in a greenhouse in England sends out its tentaclesthat grip the botanist, drinking his blood and seeking to slay him.This orchid has the power to project its vampiric attacks when itis a shriveled bulb or in the flower. This reminds us of AlgernonBlackwood's story of the vampire soil, which after its psychic orgyburst into loathsome luxuriant bloom where before it had been barren.
It is a curious heightening of supernatural effect to give to beautifulflowers diabolical cunning and murderous motives, to endow them withhuman psychology and devilish designs. The magic associated with botanyis usually black instead of white. One wonders if transmigration ofsoul does not enter subconsciously into these plots, and if a vampireorchid is not a trailing off of a human soul, the murderous blossoma revenge ghost expressing himself in that way. The plots in thistype of fiction are wrought with much imagination and the scientificexactness combined with the supernatural gives a peculiar effect ofreality.
* * * * *
There are varied forms of supernatural science that do not come underany of the heads discussed. The applications of research to weirdfiction are as diverse as the phases of investigation and only a fewmay be mentioned to suggest the variety of themes employed. Inversionof natural laws furnishes plots,--as i
n Frank R. Stockton's _Tale ofNegative Gravity_ with its discovery of a substance that enables a manto save himself all fatigue by means of a something that inverts thelaw of gravity. With a little package in his pocket a man can climbmountains without effort, but the discoverer miscalculates the amountof energy required to move and finally rises instead of staying on theearth, till his wife has to fish him into the second-story window.Poe's _Loss of Breath_ illustrates another infringement of a naturallaw, as do several stories where a human being loses his shadow.
In _The Diamond Lens_, Fitz-James O'Brien tells of a man who lookingat a drop of water through a giant microscope sees in the drop alovely woman with whom he falls madly in love, only to watch her fadeaway under the lens as his despairing eyes see the water evaporate.Supernatural acoustics enters[206] in the story of a man who discoversthe sound-center in an opera house and reads the unspoken thoughtsof those around him. He applies the laws of acoustics to mentalityand spirituality, making astounding discoveries. Bram Stoker combinessuperstition with modern science in his books, as[207] where Orientalmagic is used to fight the encroachments of an evil force emanatingfrom a mummy, as also to bring the mummy to life, while a respirator isemployed to keep away the subtle odor. He brings in blood transfusiontogether with superstitious symbols, to combat the ravages ofvampires.[208] Blood transfusion also enters into supernaturalism inStephen French Whitney's story, where a woman who has been buried in aglacier for two thousand years is recalled to life.
[206] In _The Spider's Eye_, by Lucretia P. Hale.
[207] In _The Jewel of Seven Stars_.
[208] In _Dracula_.
_The Human Chord_, by Algernon Blackwood, is a novel based on thepsychic values of sounds, which claims that sounds are all powerful,are everything,--for forms, shapes, bodies are but vibratory activitiesof sound made visible. The research worker here believes that he whohas the power to call a thing by its proper name is master of thatthing, or of that person, and that to be able to call the name of Deitywould be to enable one to become as God. He seeks to bring togethera human chord, four persons in harmony as to voice and soul, who canpronounce the awful name and become divine with him. He can changethe form or the nature of anything by calling its name, as a woman isdeformed by mispronunciation, and the walls of a room expanded by hisvoice. He can make of himself a dwarf or a giant at will, by differentmethods of speaking his own name. He says that sound could re-createor destroy the universe. He has captured sounds that strain at theirleashes in his secret rooms, gigantic, wonderful. But in the effortto call upon the mighty Name he mispronounces it, bringing a terribleconvulsion of nature which destroys him. The beholders see an awfulfire in which Letters escape back to heaven in chariots of flame.
Psychology furnishes some interesting contributions to recent fictionalong the line of what might be called momentary or instantaneousplots. Ambrose Bierce's _The Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge_ is a goodexample,--where a man is being hanged and in the instant between thedrop from the bridge and the breaking of the neck he lives throughlong and dramatic adventures, escaping his pursuers by falling intothe river and swimming ashore, reaching home at last to greet hiswife and children. Yet in a second his lifeless body swings from thebridge. _The Warning_, by Josephine Daskam Bacon, shows the case of aman who lives years in another country during a few moments of acutemental strain carried to the point of paranoia. Barry Pain has a storywhere in the time in which a man drives home from the theater he visitsanother planet and changes the current of his life, while AlgernonBlackwood compresses a great experience into a few minutes of dreaming.
One noteworthy point in connection with the scientific supernaturalismis that these themes appear only in novels and short stories. They donot cross over into poetry as do most of the other forms of the ghostlyart. Perhaps this is because the situations are intellectual ratherthan emotional, brain-problems or studies in mechanisms rather than infeelings or emotions. The province of science is removed from that ofpoetry because the methods and purposes are altogether different. Thescientific methods are clear-cut, coldly intellectual. Science demandsan exactness, a meticulous accuracy hostile to poetry which requiressuggestion, vagueness, veiled mystery for its greatest effect. _TheFlower of Silence_, for instance, would be a fitting title for a poem,but the poetic effect would be destroyed by the need for stating thegenus and species of the orchid and analyzing its destruction of humantissue. Nature's mysterious forces and elements in general and vaguelyconsidered, veiled in mists of imagination and with a sense of vastnessand beauty, are extremely poetic. But the notebook and laboratorymethods of pure science are antagonistic to poetry, though they fitadmirably into the requirements of fiction, whose purpose is to give animpression of actuality.
Another reason why these scientific themes do not pass over into poetrymay be that scientific methods as we know them are new, and poetryclings to the old and established conventions and emotions. Thereis amazing human interest in these experiments, a veritable wealthof romance, with dramatic possibilities tragic and comic, yet theyare more suited to prose fiction than to poetry. We have adapted ourbrain-cells to their concepts in prose, yet we have not thus molded ourpoetic ideas. It gives us a shock to have new concepts introduced intopoetry. An instance of this clash of realism with sentiment is shown ina recent poem where the setting is a physics laboratory. Yet in a fewmore decades we may find the poets eagerly converting the raw materialsof science into the essence of poetry itself, and by a mystic alchemymore wonderful than any yet known, transmuting intellectual problems ofscience into magic verse. _Creation_, by Alfred Noyes, is an impressivediscussion of evolution as related to God.
Perhaps another reason why these themes have not been utilized inpoetry is because they are too fantastic, too bizarre. They lackthe proportion and sense of artistic harmony that poetry requires.Strangeness and wonder are true elements of poetry, and magic isan element of the greatest art, but in solution as it were, not inthe form observed in science. The miracles of the laboratory aretoo abrupt, too inconceivable save by intellectual analysis, andpresent too great a strain upon the powers of the imagination. Theyare fantastic, while true poetry is concerned with the fancy. Magicand wonder in verse must come from concepts that steal upon theimagination and make appeal through the emotions. Thus some forms ofsupernaturalism are admirably adapted to the province of poetry,such as the presence of spirits, visitations of angels or demons,ancient witchcraft, and so forth. The elements that have universalappeal through the sense of the supernatural move us in poetry, butthe isolated instances, the peculiar problems that occur in scientificresearch if transferred to poetry would leave us cold. Yet they maycome to be used in the next _vers libre_.
Nor do these situations come over into the drama save in rareinstances. Theodore Dreiser, in a recent volume, _Plays of the Naturaland the Supernatural_, makes use of certain motifs that are strikingand modern, as[209] where a physician goes on the operating-table,the _dramatis personae_ including Demyaphon (Nitrous Acid), andAlcepheron (a Power of Physics), as well as several Shadows, mysteriouspersonages of vagueness. These Shadows here, as in _The Blue Sphere_,are not altogether clear as to motivation, yet they seem to stand forFate interference in human destiny. In the latter play Fate is alsorepresented by a Fast Mail which is one of the active characters,menacing and destroying a child.
[209] In _Laughing Gas_.
One reason why these motifs of science are not used in drama to anyextent is that they are impossible of representation on the stage.Even the wizardry of modern producers would be unable to show a Powerof Physics, or Nitrous Acid, save as they might be embodied, as werethe symbolic characters in Maeterlinck's _Blue Bird_, which would meanthat they would lose their effect. And what would a stage manager dowith the rhythm of the universe, which enters into Dreiser's play? Manysounds can be managed off stage, but hardly that, one fancies. Thesethemes are not even found in closet drama, where many other elements ofsupernaturalism which would be difficult or im
possible of presentationon the stage trail off. William Sharp's _Vistas_, for instance, couldnot be shown on the stage, yet the little plays in that volume areof wonderful dramatic power. The drama can stand a good deal ofsupernaturalism of various kinds, from the visible ghosts and devilsof the Elizabethans to the atmospheric supernaturalism of Maeterlinck,but it could scarcely support the presentations of chemicals and gasesand supernatural botany and biology that fiction handles with ease. Themiraculous machinery would balk at stage action. Fancy the Time Machinestaged, for instance!
We notice in these scientific stories a widening of the sphere ofsupernatural fiction. It is extended to include more of the normalinterests and activities of man than has formerly been the case. Herewe notice a spirit similar to that of the leveling influence seenin the case of the ghosts, devils, witches, angels, and so forth,who have been made more human not only in appearance but in emotionsand activities as well. Likewise these scientific elements have beenelevated to the human. Supernatural as well as human attributes havebeen extended to material things, as animals are given supernormalpowers in a sense different from and yet similar to those possessed bythe enchanted animals in folk-lore. Science has its physical as well aspsychic horrors which the scientific ghostly tales bring in.
Not only are animals gifted with supernatural powers but plants aswell are humanized, diabolized. We have strange murderous trees,vampire orchids, flowers that slay men in secret ways with all thesmiling loveliness of a treacherous woman. The daemonics of modernbotany form an interesting phase of ghostly fiction and give a newthrill to supernaturalism. Inanimate, concrete things are endowed withunearthly cunning and strength, as well as animals and plants. The newtype of fiction gives to chemicals and gases a hellish intelligence, adiabolic force of minds. It creates machinery and gives it an excessof force, a supernatural, more than human cunning, sometimes helpful,sometimes daemonic. Machines have been spiritualized and some enginesare philanthropic while some are like damned souls.
This scientific supernaturalism concerns itself with mortal life, notwith immortality as do some of the other aspects of the _genre_. It isconcrete in its effects, not spiritual. Its incursions into futurityare earthly, not of heaven or hell, and its problems are of time, notof eternity. The form shows how clear, cold intelligence plays withmiracles and applies the supernatural to daily life. The enthusiasm,wild and exaggerated in some ways, that sprang up over the prospectsof what modern science and investigation would almost immediately dofor the world in the latter half of the nineteenth century, had nomore interesting effect than in the stimulating of scientific fictivesupernaturalism. And though mankind has learned that science will notimmediately bring the millennium, science still exercises a strongpower over fiction. This type shows a strange effect of realism insupernaturalism, because of the scientific methods, for supernaturalismimposed on material things produces an effect of verisimilitude notgained in the realm of pure spirit. Too intellectually cold for thepurposes of poetry, too abstract and elusive for presentation indrama, and too removed by its association with the fantastic aspectsof investigation and the curiosities of science to be very appropriatefor tragedy, which has hitherto been the chief medium of expressingthe dramatic supernatural, science finds its fitting expression inprose fiction. It is an illustration of the widening range of thesupernatural in fiction and as such is significant.