BUCHANAN’S
JOURNAL OF MAN.

Psychometry: The Divine Science.

It is presumed that every reader of these pages has some knowledge of this subject, either by reading the “Manual of Psychometry” or otherwise, and has at least read the “Introduction to the Journal of Man” on our cover pages.

It is not of the directly practical bearings of Psychometry that I would speak at present, but of its imperial rank among sciences, entitling it to the post of honor.

In all human affairs, that takes the highest rank which has the greatest controlling and guiding power. The king, the statesman, the hero, the saintly founder of a religion, the philosopher that guides the course of human thought, and the scientist who gives us a greater command of nature, are the men whom we honor as the ministers of destiny.

When we speak of science, we accord the highest rank to that which gives the greatest comprehension of the world as it is—of its past and of its future. Geology and astronomy are the sciences which reach out into the illimitable alike in the present and past. Biology will do the same for the world of life when biology is completed by a knowledge of the centre of all life, the brain. But in its present acephalous condition it is but a fragment of science—a headless corpse, unfit to rank among complete sciences. Theology claims the highest rank of all, but based as it has been on the conceptions current in the dark ages, it has become, in the light of modern science, a crumbling ruin. Does psychometry compare with astronomy and geology in its scientific rank, or does it compare with the acephalous biology, which occupies all medical colleges?

It compares with neither. Like astronomy, it borders on the limitless; like geology, it reaches into the vast, undefined past; and like biology, it comprehends all life science; but unlike each, it has no limitation to any sphere. It is equally at home with living forms and with dead matter—equally at home in the humbler spheres of human life and human infirmity, and in the higher spheres of the spirit world, which we call heaven. It grasps all of biology, all of history, all of geology and astronomy, and far more than telescopes have revealed. It has no parallel in any science, for sciences are limited and defined in their scope, while psychometry is unlimited, transcending far all that collegians have called science, and all that they have deemed the limits of human capacities, for in psychometry the divinity in man becomes apparent, and the intellectual mastery of all things lifts human life to a higher plane than it has ever known before.

Psychometry is therefore in its nature and scope not classifiable among the sciences, since it reaches out above and beyond all, in a higher and broader sphere, and hence may truly be called the Divine science, for it is the expression of the Divine element in man. Wherein is Divine above human knowledge? And wherein is human above animal knowledge and understanding? The superiority in each case consists in a deeper and more interior comprehension of that which is, which realizes in the present the potentiality of the future, enabling us to act for future results and accomplish whatever is possible to our powers. That forecast, that comprehension through the present of that which is to be, constitutes foresight,—the essential element of wisdom; and in its grander manifestations it appears as prophecy. Prophecy, then, is the noblest aspect of psychometry; and if this prophetic power can be cultivated to its maximum possibilities, there is no reason why it should not become the guiding power of each individual life, and the guiding power for the destiny of nations. Moreover, in its prophetic role its superiority of rank is manifest, since it is then the instructor of all hearers,—the revealer of that in which they readily confess their ignorance.

Hence it was that St. Paul especially recommended the cultivation of prophecy as the most sacred and Divine of all religious exercises, saying, in 1 Corinthians xiv. 21-25: “If therefore the whole church be come together into one place, and all speak with tongues, and there come in those who are unlearned or unbelievers, will they not say ye are mad? But if all prophesy, and there come in one that believeth not, or one unlearned, he is convinced of all, he is judged of all: and thus are the secrets of his heart made manifest; and so falling down on his face, he will worship God, and report that God is in you of a truth.” This is a description of a congregation in which all are developed up to a psychometric and spiritual condition in which the truths of religion and the ministry of angels may have full power.

Wherever the highest order of religious sentiment is in active operation, prophecy becomes one of its results. It was so in Jewish history, and has been so in many eventful periods since.

George Fox had the most exalted religious