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The Haunters and the Haunted edited by Ernest Rhys online
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VI THE HAUNTED AND THE HAUNTERS: OR THE HOUSE AND THE BRAIN
"Well," said he, dryly, "I concede the right--what would you ask?"
"To what extent human will in certain temperaments can extend?"
"To what extent can thought extend? Think, and before you draw breath you are in China!"
"True. But my thought has no power in China."
"Give it expression, and it may have: you may write down a thought which, sooner or later, may alter the whole condition of China. What is a law but a thought? Therefore thought is infinite--therefore thought has power; not in proportion to its value--a bad thought may make a bad law as potent as a good thought can make a good one."
"Yes; what you say confirms my own theory. Through invisible currents one human brain may transmit its ideas to other human brains with the same rapidity as a thought promulgated by visible means. And as thought is imperishable--as it leaves its stamp behind it in the natural world even when the thinker has passed out of this world--so the thought of the living may have power to rouse up and revive the thoughts of the dead--such as those thoughts _were in life_--though the thought of the living cannot reach the thoughts which the dead _now_ may entertain. Is it not so?"
"I decline to answer, if, in my judgment, thought has the limit you would fix to it; but proceed. You have a special question you wish to put."
"Intense malignity in an intense will, engendered in a peculiar temperament, and aided by natural means within the reach of science, may produce effects like those ascribed of old to evil magic. It might thus haunt the walls of a human habitation with spectral revivals of all guilty thoughts and guilty deeds once conceived and done within those walls; all, in short, with which the evil will claims _rapport_ and affinity--imperfect, incoherent, fragmentary snatches at the old dramas acted therein years ago. Thoughts thus crossing each other haphazard, as in the nightmare of a vision, growing up into phantom sights and sounds, and all serving to create horror, not because those sights and sounds are really visitations from a world without, but that they are ghastly monstrous renewals of what have been in this world itself, set into malignant play by a malignant mortal.
"And it is through the material agency of that human brain that these things would acquire even a human power--would strike as with the shock of electricity, and might kill, if the thought of the person assailed did not rise superior to the dignity of the original assailer--might kill the most powerful animal if unnerved by fear, but not injure the feeblest man, if, while his flesh crept, his mind stood out fearless. Thus, when in old stories we read of a magician rent to pieces by the fiends he had evoked--or still more, in Eastern legends, that one magician succeeds by arts in destroying another--there may be so far truth, that a material being has clothed, from its own evil propensities certain elements and fluids, usually quiescent or harmless, with awful shape and terrific force--just as the lightning that had lain hidden and innocent in the cloud becomes by natural law suddenly visible, takes a distinct shape to the eye, and can strike destruction on the object to which it is attracted."
"You are not without glimpses of a very mighty secret," said Mr Richards, composedly. "According to your view, could a mortal obtain the power you speak of, he would necessarily be a malignant and evil being."
"If the power were exercised as I have said, most malignant and most evil--though I believe in the ancient traditions that he could not injure the good. His will could only injure those with whom it has established an affinity, or over whom it forces unresisted sway. I will now imagine an example that may be within the laws of nature, yet seem wild as the fables of a bewildered monk.