BUCHANAN'S. JOURNAL OF MAN
Many Authors




BUCHANAN'S
                           JOURNAL OF MAN.

              VOL. I.         MAY, 1887.        NO. 4.




CONTENTS OF JOURNAL OF MAN.


  The Prophetic Faculty: War and Peace
  Clearing away the Fog
  The Danger of living among Christians: A Question of peace or war
  Legislative Quackery, Ignorance, and Blindness to the Future
  Evils that need Attention
  What is Intellectual Greatness
  Spiritual Wonders--Slater's Tests; Spirit Pictures; Telegraphy;
    Music; Slate Writing; Fire Test
  MISCELLANEOUS INTELLIGENCE--Erratum; Co-operation; Emancipation;
    Inventors; Important Discovery; Saccharine; Sugar; Artificial
    Ivory; Paper Pianos; Social Degeneracy; Prevention of Cruelty;
    Value of Birds; House Plants; Largest Tunnel; Westward Empire
  Structure of the Brain
  Chapter III. Genesis of the Brain
  To the Readers of the Journal--College of Therapeutics
  Journal of Man--Language of Press and Readers




THE PROPHETIC FACULTY: WAR AND PEACE.


In our last issue, the psychometric faculty of prophecy was
illustrated by predictions of peace, while generals, statesmen, and
editors were promising a gigantic war. In this number the reader will
find a grand prediction of war, while statesmen and states were
anticipating peace, and a southern statesman, even upon the brink of
war, offered to drink all the blood that would be shed.

The strength of the warlike spirit and prediction at the time
psychometry was prophesying peace was conspicuous even as late as the
ninth of March, when the London correspondent of the _Sun_ wrote as
follows:

"An eminent Russian general with whom I have talked believes the plan
of Russian attack on Austria is fully developed. Galicia is to be the
battleground between the two countries. Russia will enter the province
without trouble, as there is nothing to hinder her. Then she will make
a dash to secure the important strategic railroad which runs parallel
with the Galician frontier, and seek to drive the Austrians over the
Carpathians.

"That Galicia will witness the first fighting is generally admitted, as
also that the possession of the strategic railroad, running as it does
just at the rear of the Austrian positions, would be the most vital
question. It may be interesting to say that military men of whatever
nationality look upon an early war as a certain thing. They are not
content to say they believe war is coming; they are absolutely positive
of it, and each little officer has his own personal way of conclusively
proving that this sort of peace cannot go on any longer.

 "Meanwhile there are lots of straws floating about this week, which
indicate that international winds are still blowing toward war. From
Russian Poland there is reported an interruption in all kinds of
business, owing to the war scare. Manufacturers refuse to accept orders
from private persons, and financial institutions have still further
weakened business by reducing their credit to a minimum. A letter from
St. Petersburg tells of the tremendous enthusiasm of the troops at the
review by the Czar on last Saturday, of the wild cheering for his
imperial Majesty, of the loud and strident whistles audible above the
roar of the cannon with which the officers command their men, and of the
general blending of barbaric fierceness and courage with modern
discipline and fighting improvements.

 "In Vienna the troops are hard at work practising with the Numannlicher
repeating rifle, with which all have been provided. The Sunday
observance act, usually rigorously enforced, has been suspended, that
the government orders for military supplies may be completed two weeks
earlier than contracted for.

 "The business of the Hotchkiss gun-making concern is shown to have
increased one hundred per cent with the war scare, and the eagerness to
secure the stock, which now stands at thirty per cent premium, shows a
conviction among monied men. The capital has been subscribed fifteen
times over."

The persistent prediction of peace was speedily fulfilled. March 12 my
statement was sent to the press, and March 22 Bismarck said to Prince
Rudolph of Austria that "_peace is assured to Europe for 1887_," and
newspaper correspondents announce that the war alarm is over. Mr.
Frederick Harrison, who is travelling on foot in France, writes that
he has found no one who desires war, and that the people are not even
thinking of it.

What is the popular judgment, or even the judgment of popular leaders
worth upon any great question? The masses of mankind have their
judgments enmeshed and inwoven in a web of mechanical habituality,
compelling them to believe that what is and has been must continue to
be in the future, thus limiting their conceptions to the commonplace.
Their leaders do not rise to nobler conceptions, for if they did not
sympathize with the popular, commonplace conceptions and prejudices
they would not be leaders.

"We deem it safe to assert," says Mrs. Emma Hardinge Britten in her
most valuable and interesting "History of Modern Spiritualism," "from
opinions formed upon an extensive and intimate knowledge of both North
and South, and a general understanding of the politics and parties in
both sections, that any settlement of the questions between them by
the sword was never deliberately contemplated, and that the outbreak,
no less than the magnitude and length of the mighty struggle, was all,
humanly speaking, forced on by the logic of events, rather than
through the preconcerted action of either section of the country. We
say this much to demonstrate the truly prophetic character of many of
the visions and communications which circulated amongst the
Spiritualists prior to the opening of the war."

Not only was it prophesied by the Quaker Joseph Hoag thirty years in
advance, but more fully prophesied from the spirit world by the spirit
of Gen. Washington, and again most eloquently predicted through the
lips of Mrs. E. Hardinge Britten in 1860. Yet who among all the
leaders of the people knew anything of these warnings, or was
sufficiently enlightened to have paid them any respect? The petition
of 15,000 Spiritualists was treated with contemptuous ridicule by the
American Senate, and even the demonstrable invention of Morse was
subjected to ridicule in Congress. Congressmen stand on no higher
moral plane than the people who elect them, and it is the moral
faculties that elevate men into the atmosphere of pure truth.

But ah! could we have had a Congress and State Legislatures in 1860,
composed of men sufficiently elevated in sentiment to realize the
state of the nation and the terrible necessity of preserving the peace
by conciliatory statesmanship, that four years of bloody horror and
devastation might have been spared.

Will the time ever come when nations shall be guided by wisdom
sufficient to avoid convulsions and calamities? Not until there is
sufficient intelligence and wisdom to appreciate the _science of man_,
to understand the wondrous faculties of the human soul, to follow
their guidance, and to listen to the wisdom of our ancestors as they
speak to us from a higher world.

The prophecies to which I would call attention now, came from the
upper world, and came unheeded and unproclaimed! Great truths are
always buried in silence, if possible, when they first arrive. It is
probable that the grandest prophecies in their far-reaching scope will
always come from such sources, and the grandest seers will be
inspired. The grandest prophecy of the ultimate destiny and power of
"Anthropology" came to me direct from an exalted source in the spirit
world, and no human hand had aught to do with its production. But the
human psychometric faculty has the same prophetic power in a more
limited and more practical sphere. We have no reason to affirm that
the wonderful personal prophecies of Cazotte on the brink of the
French Revolution, stated in the "Manual of Psychometry," were at all
dependent on spiritual agency.

The prophecy of our great American calamity, which purports to have
come from the spirit of Gen. Washington, appears in a book published
by Josiah Brigham in 1859, of which few of my readers have any
knowledge. The messages were written by the hand of the famous medium,
Joseph D. Stiles, between 1854 and 1857, at the house of Josiah
Brigham in Quincy, Mass., and were published at Boston in 1859, in a
large volume of 459 pages, entitled "Messages from the Spirit of John
Quincy Adams." The medium was in an unconscious trance, and the
handwriting was a fac-simile of that of John Quincy Adams. But other
spirit communications are given, and that which purports to come from
Washington was in a handwriting like his own, though not of so bold
and intellectual a style. I quote the portion of his message which
relates to the war of secession, as follows:

"The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, when they had attained the summit of
imperial wickedness and licentiousness, as the Bible informs us, fell
from their high estate by the visitation of natural penalties, and the
righteous judgments of an overruling Providence. The fall of Rome and
other large cities proves to us that no individual or nation can disobey
the irrepealable enactments of the Infinite Father, and escape the fixed
penalties attached to such transgression!

"And can boasting, sinful America indulge in the flattering, delusive
hope, that the heavy judgments which fell upon those ancient cities will
be averted from her, whose guilt is equal, if not even greater than
theirs? Does she think that Cain-like, she can escape the vigilant,
sleepless eye of that Divine Parent,

  'Whose voice is heard in the rolling thunders,
  And whose might is seen in the forked lightnings,'

and that He will turn a deaf ear to the cry of 'mortal agony,' daily
borne on the 'four winds of Heaven' to His throne of justice, from the
almost broken hearts of His slavery-crushed children?

"Far from it; America can no more expect mercy in her prosperous
wickedness, from the hand of Deity, that can the most degraded child of
earth expect to enjoy equal happiness and bliss with the more refined
and exalted intelligences of heaven. The Parent of all cares not for the
unity or perpetuation of a family of States, where the prosperity or
welfare of a single child of His is concerned.

"God, the eternal Father, has commissioned us, His ministers of truth
and justice, to a great and important undertaking! He has invested us
with power and authority to influence and guide the actions of mankind,
and aid them in their struggles for right and truth. He has bade us arm
ourselves with the weapons of love and justice, and hasten to the rescue
of our struggling brother man. His call is imperative and binding, and
we _must_ and WILL obey!

"We are able to discern the period rapidly approximating when man will
take up arms against his fellow-man, and go forth to contend with the
enemies of Republican liberty, and to assert at the point of the bayonet
those rights of which so large a portion of their fellow-creatures are
deprived. Again will the soil of America be saturated with the blood of
freedom-loving children, and her noble monuments, those sublime
attestations of patriotic will and determination, will tremble, from
base to summit, with the heavy roar of artillery, and the thunder of
cannon. The trials of that internal war will far exceed those of the war
of the Revolution, while the cause contended for will equal, if not
excel, in sublimity and power, that for which the children of '76
fought.

"But when the battle-smoke shall disappear, and the cannon's fearful
tones are heard no more, then will mankind more fully realize the
blessings outflowing from the mighty struggle in which they so valiantly
contended! No longer will their eyes meet with those bound in the chains
of physical slavery, or their ears listen to the heavy sobs of the
oppressed child of God. But o'er a land dedicated to the principles of
impartial liberty the King of Day will rise and set, and hearts now
oppressed with care and sorrow will rejoice in the blessings of
uninterrupted freedom.

"In this eventful revolution, what the patriots of the past failed to
accomplish their descendants will perform, with the timely assistance of
invisible powers. By their sides the heavenly hosts will labor,
imparting courage and fortitude in each hour of despondency, and urging
them onward to a speedy and magnificent triumph. Deploring, as we do,
the existence of slavery, and the means to be employed to purge it from
America, yet our sympathies will culminate to the cause of right and
justice, and give strength to those who seek to set the captive free,
and crush the monster, Slavery. The picture which I have presented is,
indeed, a hideous one. You may think that I speak with too much
assurance when I thus boldly prophesy the dissolution of the American
Confederacy, and, through it, the destruction of that gigantic
structure, human slavery! But