Class Book GqpiglrtW COPYRIGHT DEPOSE!* / The smallest body, or molecule, has four parts. #^6lV^? THE COMMON -SENSE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRIT OR PSYCHOLOGY WRITTEN FROM SPIRIT IMPRESSION BY CHARLES H. FOSTER OF ALAMEDA, CALIFORNIA fSW SAN FRANCISCO I 9 O I THE LIBRARY O CONGRESS, Two Copies Received MAR. 28 1901 Copyright entry CLASS <»^XXc. N» COPY B. Copyright, 28th January, 1901 By C. H. FOSTER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. • '• • ~ » KATIE'S LEGACY. To my clear daughter K't: Before entering the door of this college, First test and see that your mind he free, Ere seeking herein for knowledge. For as you receive these truths of mine, Shall I remain forever thine. Here 's Nature, grand, supreme, sublime ; There are no dead, there is not time, Nor yet no life, as toe '11 unfold, While heat there may be, yet no cold. CONTENTS. Page. Introductory 5 ChapterI. The Atom 20 II. First Impression —What is Truth — But Three Eter- nal Facts — Birth of the World 27 III. Spirit Life— No Such Thing as Time— Atom Life 33 IV. Sixth Sense— Growth of the Physical World — Birth of the Spirit World 37 V. Development of a Medium— Spirit Hypnotism— Why- Darkness is Preferable 41 VI. The Mystic Circle— Destiny 54 VII. Sensitised, Progressed, or Spirit Ether— Spirit Return — Sympathetic Attraction 58 VIII. Ponderable and Imponderable— Strange Gods 64 IX. Healing by the Ultimate Atom 69 X. A Little Grain of Corn, or The Quickening Germ of Life 76 CONTENTS. Chapter. Page. XI. Hypnotism— You do not See with your Eyes 79 XII. Reply to Professor Huxley on The Physical Basis of Life 84 XIII. Prophecy . 89 XIV. The Over-Soul, or God and its Affinity to Matter 92 XV. God, Life and Over-Soul 99 XVI. Vitality in Stones — A New Substance 102 XVII. Spirit the Effect of Physical Cause — Condition of Childhood 108 XVIII. Materialization — The Object of Materialization — Animal Curiosity — Educated Parrots 115 XIX. That which Thinks Thoughts — Birth of the Spirit Body and the Soul— The Cause of all Causation... 122 XX. Planetary and Elementary Spirits so-called — The Birth of Intelligence and Wisdom — Astral Shell —Reincarnation 131 XXI. Animal Spirits— Will the World Eventually Turn to a Grease Spot?— Will we be Annoyed by Fleas and Things in the Spirit World? 143 XXII. Clairvoyance— Clairaudience— Investigating Mater- ialization — Wonderful Manifestations 149 XXIII. Parody on Common Sense 181 XXIV. Birth-Marks 183 CONTENTS. Chapter. Page. XXV. The Keystone, or A Peep Behind the Veil— The Brain the Highest Physical Matter — How a Child is Born Deaf and Dumb 191 XXVI. Reason and Intelligence— Thought Transference — Hypnotic Subject — Your Thoughts are on the Outside of Your Brain 196 XXVII. Spirit Double— Personating a Spirit 214 XXVIII. There is no Death— Have you a Body ? 220 XXIX. Is Physical Force Transniittible to Spirit and Vice Versa — Miracles — Passing Matter Through Matter— The Immortality of the Soul 225 XXX. The First Dawn of the Spark of Life — Which was First, the Egg or the Chicken? 232 XXXI. If no Matter is Destroyed, what Becomes of it? 240 XXXII. What are Life and Matter Composed of ?— Psycho- physical— The Beginning of Sex 253 XXXIII. Educated Mediums 267 XXXIV. Is the Course of Life and Matter Forever Onward ? 275 XXXV. A Question to Astronomers 282 XXXVL Substance, Animation and Matter 303 XXXVII. Descartes' Vortex versus Newton's Gravity— Phys- ical or Mechanical Force versus Atomic Energy 311 XXXVIII. Placing the Keystone.... 323 CONTENTS. Chapter. Page. XXXIX. Lower Physics — Psycho-Physics and Higher, or Metaphysics 330 XL. A Comment on Max Muller's Philosophy of Thought — What is Rational Reason? 335 XLI. Is it Right to Kill? 355 XLII. A Review and Adieu 367 The Obituary 370 Independent Spirit- Writing 371 INTRODUCTORY As the author of this work received what little edu- cation he has in the next thing to a log cabin, a single- room schoolhouse, we hope that " we deinn folks," at least, will be fair to middling in criticising our poverty in rhetorical flourishes, and will understand that an imj)ressional writer does not receive the WORDS from his control but that they come to him more in the form of a picture; he sees it, senses it, or just gets it. In fact, it is difficult to describe. You will understand that Truth and facts are not neces- sarily words which are only a convenience made by man, who is not infallible. It is not in the power of man to give to the world reliable instruction when starting from a point in the UNKNOWN and, we may say, UNKNOWABLE. Nearly all philosophers who have given to the world treatises on metaphysics, from Bruno to Kant, have invariably started from the wrong end of the question by assuming as their first postulate that which we think should have been their very last and highest conclusion, namely: A FIRST CAUSE. A thing, if existing, must, from the very nature of the thing, be forever beyond the comprehension of finite (6) man, and would be better understood as a LAST CAUSE, so far as the object of the investigator is con- cerned. For if man should ever reach that knowledge, it would naturally be the last end of his labor and not the first. By pursuing the course they have they were compelled, from the start, to build in the dark on an unknown quantity and quality for a foundation. From working the question, first on a downward course of reasoning from an assumed first cause to the physical world and then trying to retrace their logic back to this imaginary starting-point, they found it invari- ably left the result of their labor in a chaotic state which neither satisfied themselves or the student. While such a course of reasoning may be good enough for the Church, to prove the Bible right by the Church/and the Church right by the Bible, yet it does not satisfy the Truth. Would these same philosophers consider it a proper course to instruct a child in the mysteries of Euclid by beginning with the classics, or would they begin with the numerals and multiplication table? Would they begin to teach a boy how to construct a com- pound steam-engine by giving him charge of the en- gineer's department of an ocean steamer? Recogniz- ing this as the cause of their failure in the past, and seeing the utter impossibility of man's ever being able to prove a first cause, the very nature of which places it forever beyond human comprehension, we, in this (7 ) work, have thought it advisable to begin at the little end (the atom) and trace upwards from effect to cause, instead of from cause to effect. By assuming this position we are not required to say to our student at the very beginning of his labor : " Just please ac- cept our first postulate, ex nihilo nihil fit, and leave reason behind," for you must take it for granted that only in this one instance was the very first cause from nothing, but all else, my son, had a cause. " In the beginning was God." Well, how about be- fore this beginning? No, my friend; such logic will convince no one, for, however reluctant man is to ac- knowledge his ignorance, this is a case where he has just got to, whether he likes it or not, so we might as well be honest about it and say we do not know that it is a person, a being, an idea, or a condition, and all that we do know is that life exists (i. e., as thought and force). By starting our investigations from the atom of life and matter we assume nothing, but have a known and fixed point of demarcation to work from, and by fol- lowing on such lines of truth as have already been proven such (i. e., from effect to cause), we have the satisfaction of being able to prove our work as we proceed. In this manner we will endeavor to lead the student to the knoivn truth of spirit. From this point we have the right to form an a priori opinion ; but one step further and we will infer that from Spirit is pro- (8 ) duced a Soul ; beyond this point all is purely conjec- ture, even Avith the spirit. Furthermore, you may examine the chain we have wrought for you now that we think that we have com- pleted it, from either end you please, either from ef- fect to cause or from cause to effect, and see if you can find a reasonable flaw, bearing in mind that, The noblest attribute of man is to be charitable in your thoughts of others. Recognizing the extreme difficulty of teaching the essence of the Occult Science in such a way as will en- able us to place this little volume in the hands of the middle class of people, we thought our work could best be accomplished by adhering as closely as pos- sible to the following common-sense rules : First. — To boil it down to as few words as possible. Second. — To refrain from ambiguous words and stick to plain United States. Third. — Recognizing, as we do, that all religions or creeds are founded on Truth and the good of mankind, —as they understand it, — and that the intentions of the founders of all creeds were pure and sincere, and knowing, as we do from experience and otherwise, that the universe is constructed upon that mystic law of the positive and negative of life and matter, we rec- ognize that for man or spirit to do and to act good is to acknowledge the presence of the negative of good, which is error. : (9) Here we assert that wherever roan finds error or evil there also will he find good, if he is anxious to find the one as the other ; for it is not only the nature but the necessity for the existence of the one to be found in company of the other; i. e., the positive and the negative. Nor will this condition be changed until all shall have become at one with Infinite, or Perfec- tion. Hence you will perceive the impossibility of a so-called Millennium. In all teachings where a body of people join togeth- er for the promulgating of some discovered or re- vealed truth, there is to be found a certain percentage of error; and it would appear from past experiences that the older the creed the more the weeds accumu- late. But be the weeds ever so thick, the truth that ex- ists among the weeds should ever be man's most sacred charge, and to bring thr .3 truths to light his bounden duty to progression. In this work we have endeavored to steer clear of those shoals that have in the past wrecked so many creeds. In particular, we have not advanced or at- tempted to sustain any part of this work on belief; nor do we appeal to your credulity or offer you our own opinion, but offer you known scientific facts in one unbroken chain of evidence which must appeal to your own reasonable common sense. We deny that any thing was ever created, or that there is one particle of known evidence in existence to ( io ) sustain the theory that some thing can be, or ever was, produced from nothing, and we claim that all known scientific researches lead directly to the contrary. For the enlightened mind at this advanced age to en- tertain such a preposterous supposition or belief is to erect one of the false gods which this work has en- deavored to overthrow. In our use of the words positive and negative we wish to be understood as having reference to the op- posites, such as with the crooked you have straight, good and bad, love and hate, attraction and repulsion, sleeping and awakening, truth and error, etc. We have also refrained from abusing the other lawyer; nor have we been compelled to wander off into a lofty flow of rhetoric, in order to show our want of live mat- ter to consume printer's ink — for, had we done so, we should have defeated the very object of this work, which is intended as a guide or text-book on only known laws and facts, laid down in an abstract man- ner. Another object was that it might be the means of saving the young investigator a few dollars and some time, by steering him in the right direction. We think, at least, that after he reads this book carefully he will not invest five dollars in so-called magnetized slates. However, I shall be sorry if I shall have robbed him of some of the supposed sweets that gen- erally accompany the kissing and hugging of his best girl when she comes in the form of a materialized ( 11 ) spirit. (With all due respect to the spirit or autom- aton. Ahem!) The author will here state the circumstances which induced him to undertake this work, and the reader must use his own judgment as to the truth or proba- bility of the deductions that it was written under spirit control, for I have no proofs to offer except the book itself. It is my desire that the compiler will place the various days, months, years, etc., at such points in the writings as he finds them in the manu- script. This will, I hope, be some evidence. For about a month previous to January 5, 1894, some power seemed to continually urge me to take up a blank tablet and write. Well, I knew that I could not write as I could wish, and I was afraid of a fail- ure. Finally it grew so very urgent that I picked up the book, sharpened a pencil, — and positively, reader, I had not the slightest idea what I was going to write. As soon as I placed the pencil on the paper, the first sentence came into my mind, and by the time I had that down another sentence took its place. It did not appear to make any difference how fast I wrote, the other sentence was always ready; in fact, I soon learned that the faster I wrote and the less I tried to think, the better I progressed. This would continue until I had written about six or seven hundred words, when right in the middle of a sentence some times, the force, intelligence, or whatever it was, would leave ( 12 ) me, and I could not think of a word to save me. The next day, about the same time, the same desire to write would come over me, and away we would go again. After I would get through, it was just as in- teresting to me as though I had never seen it before. This would keep up sometimes for three or four days ; then I would not be able to write for several days. Then the power left me for over a year, then stayed for a week, and again left a breach of one and a half years, beginning again in February, 1897. At this time I found that I could write almost con- tinuously. After looking over the writings, I seldom ever changed a word or made a correction ; all told, I probably changed in the whole volume one hundred words. I do not claim the article on healing or my ex- perience with mediums as impressional, but the rest of this book certainly is, to the best of my knowledge, for several explanations found within were entirely contrary to my previous convictions, — especially so the article on the automaton theory of materialization and the declination of the earth's axis. Again you must remember that it should cut no figure with you by whom or how the work was done; the Devil could utter a truth as well as a saint. It is not a question as to who Galileo was, or whether such a man lived or not. The question is : Is it a truth, and will it bene- fit man to know it? I cannot see that the personality of the author has anything to do with it whatever. (13) NOTICE TO THE READER. We would most respectfully call the attention of the reader of this book to the most important considera- tion of all, and that is : Do not attempt to read this book, in particular, if you are at the same time think- ing of what you are going to have for dinner, or how your new dress fits, or the state of the wheat market ; when you do get started with it, and you find yourself getting sleepy, for God's sake, lay it down and take a nap. If any one should annoy you at the time, offer to loan them the book, stating that you will finish it when they are through ; for unless you can raise your moral courage to that extent and be able to enter into the spirit of the subject, or read between the lines, so to speak, it will be perfectly useless for you to attempt the study of so delicate a subject as metaphysics. Neither will it benefit you to skip through it in a cur- sory manner, as you will find that each succeeding page is but the result of the preceding one, our object being from the beginning to start the edifice from the foundation (an atom), knowing full well that we should find a place for the keystone when we had to use it. We most sincerely hope that the reader will meet with the same success. One writing from impression stands in relation to the information received in the same light or position (14) as the shorthand reporter to a court. He is simply a machine putting down in symbols representing cer- tain vibratory waves of motion or sound that which you call language, and is not responsible for the truth or philosophy of that which he records. The impressional writer gets his information in the form of a mental or illustrational picture of those truths or facts which the higher spirit intelligence wishes to convey to their reporter or sensitive. Here you will observe that somewhat similar laws govern the accuracy of both reports ; i. e., if the court report- er, for instance, should be slightly indisposed from various physical causes, — loss of sleep, pressed for money, on a tear, sickness, etc., — he may be slow to catch or note every sound called language, and in his anxiety to keep up with his work, he may make his notes a trifle too short; then when he comes to put his notes into typewriting, those places where he has " foreshortened " his already shorthand, he is com- pelled to coin his own language. Hence you will be generous enough to allow that the impressional writer, being physical, must of ne- cessity be subject to the same liabilities; hence the necessity of the reader using extreme care in receiv- ing any and all so-called spirit communications, whether in inspirational speaking, clairvoyant or im- pressional writing, — for if with the very best of court reporters errors will creep in while receiving the (15) words themselves on the auditory nerve, how much more difficult must it be for a sensitive to properly place in language those truths conveyed to him through impression? Is not his physical body subject to the same errors of the flesh? The fact of his being a sensitive does not emancipate him from these er- rors of inharmony any more than any other mortal. This idea, which many investigators of spirit phe- nomena have, that because John Jones is a medium, then per se, he is a sort of tin god on wheels, is all non- sense; for, of a truth, all mortals -are mediums, — 't is only a question of degree, the same as reason and in- telligence. There is no gulf separating the least from the greatest, — merely a question of addition, or a uniting of the units. Note : By the above explanation, a just and impar- tial critic or student of this work, we hope, will un- derstand that in reading a report of any work on the philosophy of metaphysics, if he wishes to arrive at the spirit of the communication, he should not take every word as an absolute and unalterable statement of all the essential facts. As every individual has his own peculiar manner of arriving at conclusions of the various phenomena as they present themselves for consideration, yet, after all is said, the abstract question is: Does this road also lead to Rome? One of the objects of human life, as we understand ( 16 ) it, is to gather wisdom from experience, and, as one of the essentials to wisdom is time, you will perceive that it requires a vast deal of time to travel all of the various roads to Rome before you are enabled to ar- rive at even a partially correct opinion of which is the most advisable road to follow; i. e., which of the vari- ous philosophical statements up to the present day makes the most direct appeal to common sense as to the abstract truth of the cause of causation. P. S. — The student or reader of this little book will observe that we have frequently written in the first, second, or third person. The best explanation that I, the amanuensis, can offer is, that you, the reader, will find, as you advance in the book, that Ptolemy cautioned me that I must learn to separate my thoughts from his. As I told him at the time, I was afraid that was easier said than done. I find in look- ing over the work that I was pretty nearly correct, and, therefore, Avould ask the reader to use his or her own judgment in the matter, for now I have about finished the work, I find it still a difficult thing to do. As it is a question of revolutionary as well as evolutionary truth bearing on the old accepted philosophy, the question of who is writing it or whether all the con- ventional rules of writing have been adhered to should cut no figure as to the abstract truth of the deductions here advanced. Yours in charity of thought, C. H. Foster. ( 17 ) PHILOSOPHY VEKSUS SCHOLASTIC THEOLOGY. To the student we wish to say, that in beginning your search after the absolute truth of the cause of causation, we think that you will be willing to ad- mit that the first and most essential consideration on your part is to determine whether you have arrived at that condition in life that you can for a fact declare that your mind, conscience, or will is in a free condi- tion, and not at all tinctured or influenced by either your previous teachings or fixed opinions to such an extent as would debar you the free exercise of your five natural senses ; through and by which all men in their individual capacity must, if free, determine for themselves as to the simple truth of all phenomena. If this be the fact, it would appear to us that, in beginning our investigations, the first move should be to fully inform ourselves as to the difference be- tween Theory and Facts, Belief and Knowledge, or the hereditary teachings of the opinions of others, or so-called Faith, and the facts furnished you from the experience gained through the evidence of your own natural senses when applied to the subject in a rational manner. (18) Hence we are presumptuous enough to hope that the student will pardon us when we say that this is the gulf that always has remained, and probably ever will remain, as an impassable barrier between Knowl- edge and Belief, Keason and Superstition, or common sense and scholasticism. In order that the student may be enabled to in a measure judge the state of his own mind, or I am, as regards to whether he is free, we will lend him a scale to temporarily measure his idea of freedom; which scale is : Man for a fact knows nothing. He only arrives at a conception of what appears or seems to him to exist as a truth or fact by the applica- tion of his five senses, and as it is conceded by all pro- found thinkers that no two individuals arrive at precisely the same opinion, — i. e., word for word, — in describi ^ome one thing which they have wit- nessed at the fectm3 moment of time, then this of itself is sufficient evidence that the physical senses are not absolute evidence of truth. Hence we deduce that all so-called knowledge is only relative seeming, or appearing to be so. For, as all is ceaseless motion, then all is ceaselessly chan- ging, — i. e., Thought, Force, and Substance; and as thought is the basis of knowledge, it follows, that that which was knowledge at one second has changed in the next second ; which would place it only relatively to that which has passed, and if this be the truth, it (19) would naturally follow that human existence is not a real but a relative condition. This is the philosopher's scale which we loan to you for this occasion, the reasonable application of which depends entirely upon your own unbiased common sense. (20) CHAPTEK I. THE ATOM. As the foundation of this work is based upon the atom, it is permissible for us to inquire : What is an atom? And as it is of the utmost importance that the reader should fully and clearly comprehend what that atom really and practically is in all its various con- ditions, positions, and compositions, in order that all visionary or chimerical ideas may be entirely re- moved from your mind, we will endeavor to give you a plain and simple definition. First. An atom is that single piece of matter that is so small as to be no longer susceptible of a divi- sion into more than one part. Second. It is the beginning or birth of the three dimensions of length, breadth, and thickness, and the first occupant of space, or the unit of commensura- tion. You will first understand that there are really two classes of atoms. The first atom we will designate the infinite atom, which is only recognized by science in a conjectural sense and this conjecture is from the known fact that, as far as the ingenuity of man has (21 ) been enabled to go, either in chemistry or with the most powerful microscope, we find clear and abundant proof that it is impossible for the mind of man to com- prehend a last division of matter ; hence we are com- pelled to designate it as the Infinite atom, and outside the comprehension of man, and, being such, you will perceive it would be a useless waste of time for man to try to comprehend that which is incomprehensible. We will therefore take up the second class of atoms, to which, in this work, we have given the appellation of the ultimate atom, for the very good reason that it is the ultimate limit of human comprehension of the subdivision of matter. We will first define this atom as a Thing which is the very next akin to No Thing, or nothing, and just barely within the limit of com- prehension by man when observed in the accumulated form of countless numbers, such as the so-called tail of a comet, the light of the sun, or the most minute microscopic object. No human being ever has or ever will be able to see sl single ultimate atom, even when the sense of sight is aided by the most powerful micro- scope. Take, for instance, the smallest object on the field of your microscope; in order to see it you are compelled to gather together count- less thousands of other single atoms of light, by means of your reflecting mirror, and concen- trate them on the object in order to aid the optic nerve in sensing it ; the very fact of your being able to see it ( 22 ) even in this manner is practical proof that it is again subject to division; for, in your mind, you can con- ceive of a half or a tenth part of that which the aided eye beholds. As this fact proves that the mind of man has no idea of the amount of space a single atom oc- cupies, then it becomes evident that no man can say or know whether this microscopic object is composed of a hundred, a thousand, or even a million of single atoms. You will also bear in mind that sound is matter in motion, in the form of vibratory waves. Now, try to conceive of the condition of that matter when set in motion by the wing of a mosquito ; or take atmospher- ic air, which is a composition of other atoms, — if you cannot see an atom of air, how much smaller are the atoms of oxygen or nitrogen which compose the air. As the atom is no longer subject to division, it be- comes the only Thing which you can truthfully call a SOLID for all other matter would be composed of more than one atom and, as the atoms when in groups of two or more, do not touch each other but have a space between equal to their own diameter (see Physi- cal Chemistry), then it is a self-evident fact that no object matter can be solid. By this analysis of the first, or undeveloped, atom of matter, you will see that man can not have any real knowledge of what matter is composed of; we are only made aware of its actual existence after it has ( 23 ) passed through at least one, if not several, changes, by its joining itself to another atom. In this work, there- fore, we designate it as the point of beginning of hi man comprehension, and will request the readers to keep this fact at all times foremost in their minds while studying the various positions in which they will be called upon to view and weigh this ATOM in the many changes we shall be required to place it as we advance in our endeavors to unfold to you the many almost insurmountable difficulties surrounding the MYSTIC TEMPLE of LIFE and the ATOM. Which was constructed from the FIRST to the LAST, of the LEAST and the GREATEST, for the BEGINNING and the END. In these our primary remarks we use the term atom of matter; but as the student advances out of the old orthodox philosophy, that all is matter, we shall en- deavor to gradually develop the understanding as to the difference between matter and substance. (See Chapter XXXVI.) In order that the lay mind or student may be en- abled to clearly comprehend the vital importance of the atom, and the part it will be called upon to play in this volume, we will here present a practical illustra- tion by taking four marbles and assume that each marble represents an atom and that each atom is a point in space. It is a conceded fact that a point has neither length, breadth, nor thickness. ( 24) Figure 1 represents the beginning or promise of mathematics or extension, but not mathe- Fig - x matics or extension itself. When two atoms come together, as in Figure 2, we have the birth of one of the three dimensions of space, — i. e. length or extension only, — and the prom- ise of a form; when these are joined by a Fig * 2 - *m- >mK third atom, as in Figure 3, we have the