by Sax Rohmer
No visible advance (I exclude the hermetic and theosophical arcana) has been made in these matters for many generations. Until very recent times, substantial men of science ignored the subject; but quite an illuminating work could be compiled of the fragments of occult wisdom strewn through the writings of the poets — outcomes, not of inquiry, but of inspiration. Omar Khayyam, for all his hedonism, is richly streaked with gold, and Sir Edwin Arnold’s Light of Asia I would place in the hands of every would-be inquirer as a textbook.
But now there is a promise of a new era; and one looks for great things when sorcery and science go hand in hand. In this way, and in this way alone, can we hope to progress; it is almost vain to look for an Apollonius of London, of Paris, or of New York.
“God still communicates with mankind,” according to Sir William Ramsay, “using the voice with ‘the sound of deep silence’ heard by the prophets of Israel and mentioned in the marginal notes in the Revised Version of the Bible; but, as a great French writer has said, to have miracles we must have saints; and there are few saints.”
Forty years ago, he declared, scientists would have branded as a lunatic any man who said it was possible for a spirit to communicate with another spirit, lacking the interposition of the material. Yet to-day scientists admitted the possibility of such phenomena.
There is undoubtedly a tremendous future for psychical inquiry along photographic lines. The writer who conceals his identity under the nom de plume” A Member of the Society for Psychical Research,” conducted a series of remarkable experiments of this kind some years ago. The experiments were conducted with the assistance of a distinctly mediumistic photographer.
The writer brought his “own marked plates, placed beforehand in the dark shutter,” and watched the entire process of development in the dark room. Moreover, he used to visit the studio at odd times, and without giving the photographer notice of his intention.
He writes:
“The plates obtained under these conditions invariably disclosed a vague, cloud-like formation hovering near my own person, and sometimes showing distinct outlines of a form. In one or two instances features would become distinctly visible in this cloudlike emanation on the third or fourth plate — the very gradualness of the development of the form seeming to me to tell in favour of the genuineness of the pictures. I have thus obtained an infinite variety of pictures on plates prepared by myself, and remaining under my constant observation to the last.... Experienced photographers who have seen them maintain that they could be produced normally, although they also admit that this could not possibly be done under the conditions stated.”
The labours of Lodge, Crookes, Ramsay, Barrett, Wallace, and others, must sooner or later bear fruit. It is quite absurd to suppose, in this age of discoveries, that we understand all Nature’s laws. But the difficulty of demonstrating the existence of occult phenomena to the general public can only be likened to that of demonstrating the perfume of a rose to a person who has never possessed the sense of smell, the beauty of an autumn sunset to a blind man, or the distinction in flavour between Astrakhan and American caviare to one of defective palate.
Photography, to my mind, should prove to be the link joining the physical to the psychical. The experiments at séances, the experiments with the planchette, are all unsatisfactory. But think what might have been achieved by a photographer, provided with a flashlight apparatus, at one of Cagliostro’s magical banquets!
Another avenue of research there is, which, however, is all too rarely opened; I refer to apparent cases of “throw-back.” Professor Richet mentions a French lady, who wrote whole pages in Greek, although not even knowing the Greek alphabet; and in the Gentleman’s Magazine for May 1760 is given an account, on the testimony of Dr. Hooper, Capt. Fisher, and another, of a boy at Reading who periodically was seized with fits, during which he delivered lengthy theological discourses. As also bearing upon this phase of the subject, I append a paragraph from F. L. Rawson’s Life Understood from a Religious and Scientific Point of View.
“The head of one of the religious sects in England once asked advice with reference to a man who had been his stenographer... and who was then speaking and writing Chinese fluently, having never known a word of that language. He wanted to know whether it was of God or of the devil, as this would make a considerable difference to his future policy. After answering a few questions he told me that the stenographer at these times went into an ecstatic condition, and was tongue-tied. By this he meant that he was unable to answer questions whilst speaking or writing Chinese.”
Proof is what a sceptical world awaits. According to Mrs. Annie Besant a great Adept appears once in every century whose task is to guide humanity a little further onward to the hidden goal. The next of these should bear in mind poor childish mankind’s crying need of something tangible — something to grasp.
The Delphi Classics Catalogue
We are proud to present a listing of our complete catalogue of English titles, with new titles being added every month. Buying direct from our website means you can make great savings and take advantage of our instant Updates service. You can even purchase an entire series (Super Set) at a special discounted price.
Only from our website can readers purchase the special Parts Edition of our Complete Works titles. When you buy a Parts Edition, you will receive a folder of your chosen author’s works, with each novel, play, poetry collection, non-fiction book and more divided into its own special volume. This allows you to read individual novels etc. and to know precisely where you are in an eBook. For more information, please visit our Parts Edition page.
Series One
Anton Chekhov
Charles Dickens
D.H. Lawrence
Dickensiana Volume I
Edgar Allan Poe
Elizabeth Gaskell
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
George Eliot
H. G. Wells
Henry James
Ivan Turgenev
Jack London
James Joyce
Jane Austen
Joseph Conrad
Leo Tolstoy
Louisa May Alcott
Mark Twain
Oscar Wilde
Robert Louis Stevenson
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Walter Scott
The Brontës
Thomas Hardy
Virginia Woolf
Wilkie Collins
William Makepeace Thackeray
Series Two
Alexander Pushkin
Alexandre Dumas (English)
Andrew Lang
Anthony Trollope
Bram Stoker
Christopher Marlowe
Daniel Defoe
Edith Wharton
F. Scott Fitzgerald
G. K. Chesterton
Gustave Flaubert (English)
H. Rider Haggard
Herman Melville
Honoré de Balzac (English)
J. W. von Goethe (English)
Jules Verne
L. Frank Baum
Lewis Carroll
Marcel Proust (English)
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nikolai Gogol
O. Henry
Rudyard Kipling
Tobias Smollett
Victor Hugo
William Shakespeare
Series Three
Ambrose Bierce
Ann Radcliffe
Ben Jonson
Charles Lever
Émile Zola
Ford Madox Ford
Geoffrey Chaucer
George Gissing
George Orwell
Guy de Maupassant
H. P. Lovecraft
Henrik Ibsen
Henry David Thoreau
Henry Fielding
J. M. Barrie
James Fenimore Cooper
John Buchan
John Galsworthy
Jonathan Swift
Kate Chopin
Kather
ine Mansfield
L. M. Montgomery
Laurence Sterne
Mary Shelley
Sheridan Le Fanu
Washington Irving
Series Four
Arnold Bennett
Arthur Machen
Beatrix Potter
Bret Harte
Captain Frederick Marryat
Charles Kingsley
Charles Reade
G. A. Henty
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Edgar Wallace
E. M. Forster
E. Nesbit
George Meredith
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Jerome K. Jerome
John Ruskin
Maria Edgeworth
M. E. Braddon
Miguel de Cervantes
M. R. James
R. M. Ballantyne
Robert E. Howard
Samuel Johnson
Stendhal
Stephen Crane
Zane Grey
Series Five
Algernon Blackwood
Anatole France
Beaumont and Fletcher
Charles Darwin
Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Edward Gibbon
E. F. Benson
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Friedrich Nietzsche
George Bernard Shaw
George MacDonald
Hilaire Belloc
John Bunyan
John Webster
Margaret Oliphant
Maxim Gorky
Oliver Goldsmith
Radclyffe Hall
Robert W. Chambers
Samuel Butler
Samuel Richardson
Sir Thomas Malory
Thomas Carlyle
William Harrison Ainsworth
William Dean Howells
William Morris
Series Six
Anthony Hope
Aphra Behn
Arthur Morrison
Baroness Emma Orczy
Captain Mayne Reid
Charlotte M. Yonge
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
E. W. Hornung
Ellen Wood
Frances Burney
Frank Norris
Frank R. Stockton
Hall Caine
Horace Walpole
One Thousand and One Nights
R. Austin Freeman
Rafael Sabatini
Saki
Samuel Pepys
Sir Issac Newton
Stanley J. Weyman
Thomas De Quincey
Thomas Middleton
Voltaire
William Hazlitt
William Hope Hodgson
Series Seven
Adam Smith
Benjamin Disraeli
Confucius
David Hume
E. M. Delafield
E. Phillips Oppenheim
Edmund Burke
Ernest Hemingway
Frances Trollope
Galileo Galilei
Guy Boothby
Hans Christian Andersen
Ian Fleming
Immanuel Kant
Karl Marx
Kenneth Grahame
Lytton Strachey
Mary Wollstonecraft
Michel de Montaigne
René Descartes
Richard Marsh
Sax Rohmer
Sir Richard Burton
Talbot Mundy
Thomas Babington Macaulay
W. W. Jacobs
Ancient Classics
Achilles Tacitus
Aeschylus
Ammianus Marcellinus
Apollodorus
Appian
Apuleius
Apollonius of Rhodes
Aristophanes
Aristotle
Arrian
Augustine
Aulus Gellius
Bede
Cassius Dio
Cato
Catullus
Cicero
Clement of Alexandria
Demosthenes
Diodorus Siculus
Diogenes Laërtius
Euripides
Frontius
Herodotus
Hesiod
Hippocrates
Homer
Horace
Josephus
Julius Caesar
Juvenal
Livy
Longus
Lucan
Lucian
Lucretius
Marcus Aurelius
Martial
Nonnus
Ovid
Pausanias
Petronius
Pindar
Plato
Plautus
Pliny the Elder
Pliny the Younger
Plotinus
Plutarch
Polybius
Procopius
Propertius
Quintus Smyrnaeus
Sallust
Sappho
Seneca the Younger
Septuagint
Sophocles
Statius
Strabo
Suetonius
Tacitus
Terence
Theocritus
Thucydides
Tibullus
Virgil
Xenophon
Delphi Poets Series
A. E. Housman
Alexander Pope
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Andrew Marvell
Beowulf
Charlotte Smith
Christina Rossetti
D. H Lawrence (poetry)
Dante Alighieri (English)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Delphi Poetry Anthology
Edgar Allan Poe (poetry)
Edmund Spenser
Edward Lear
Edward Thomas
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Emily Dickinson
Ezra Pound
Friedrich Schiller (English)
George Chapman
George Herbert
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Isaac Rosenberg
Johan Ludvig Runeberg
John Clare
John Donne
John Dryden
John Keats
John Milton
John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester
Joost van den Vondel
Leigh Hunt
Lord Byron
Ludovico Ariosto
Luís de Camões
Matthew Arnold
Michael Drayton
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Robert Browning
Robert Burns
Robert Frost
Robert Southey
Rumi
Rupert Brooke
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Sir Philip Sidney
Sir Thomas Wyatt
Sir Walter Raleigh
Thomas Chatterton
Thomas Gray
Thomas Hardy (poetry)
Thomas Hood
Torquato Tasso
T. S. Eliot
W. B. Yeats
Walter Savage Landor
Walt Whitman
Wilfred Owen
William Blake
William Cowper
William Wordsworth
Masters of Art
Albrecht Dürer
Amedeo Modigliani
Canaletto
Caravaggio
Caspar David Friedrich
Claude Monet
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Diego Velázquez
Edgar Degas
Édouard Manet
Eugène Delacroix
Francisco Goya
Giotto
Gustave Courbet
Gust
av Klimt
J. M. W. Turner
Johannes Vermeer
John Constable
Leonardo da Vinci
Michelangelo
Paul Cézanne
Paul Gauguin
Paul Klee
Peter Paul Rubens
Piero della Francesca
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Sandro Botticelli
Raphael
Rembrandt van Rijn
Thomas Gainsborough
Titian
Vincent van Gogh
Wassily Kandinsky
www.delphiclassics.com
Is there an author or artist you would like to see in a series? Contact us at [email protected] (or via the social network links below) and let us know!
Be the first to learn of new releases and special offers:
Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/delphiebooks
Follow our Tweets: https://twitter.com/delphiclassics
Explore our exciting boards at Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/delphiclassics/
St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Cemetery, London — Rohmer’s final resting place
Rohmer’s grave
