Read Ebook: Buchanan's Journal of Man February 1887 Volume 1 Number 1 by Buchanan Joseph R Joseph Rodes Editor

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"This is the doctrine, substantially, as put forth at the present time by Mr. George, and by so many persons supposed to be entirely new. Again we remark that 'there is nothing new under the sun.'"

This subject will be taken up hereafter in the JOURNAL OF MAN. Its progress as a policy will be noted, its writers reviewed, and the dictates of dispassionate science presented. It is too late to intercept the folly and crime that have surrendered the rights of the people in the American continent, but not too late to begin reclamation of our lost sovereignty.

In the near future this must be the burning question of politics and statesmanship, as it is at present in Great Britain. The agitations in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales have long been on the verge of bloody conflict, and a Land League has been formed in Germany at Berlin, of which Dr. A. Theodor Stamm is president, having for its object the transfer of land ownership from individuals to the State. A newspaper at Berlin is devoted to its objects.

It is no wonder that the tenants of the Duke of Argyle have risen against the police that enforce the landlord's claims, and that the Welsh resistance against tithes has impoverished the Welsh clergy.

"The assertion has been frequently made that rents have increased more in England than in Ireland; but one of the ablest English statisticians, a man who can hardly be accused of partiality toward Ireland, has recently pointed out that while in the forty years from 1842 to 1882 the rents in England increased on an average 15 percent, the rents in Ireland in the same period increased on an average 20 per cent, and this, too, in a country where farming has been carried on on a low scale of culture, where the landlord has done practically nothing for his tenant, and where the results of the harvest are more uncertain than in England. It is the constant desire that the Irish landlords have shown in the past to get the last pound of flesh and the last drop of blood out of their tenants that is the cause of the present detestation in which they are held by the latter."

In the house of Representatives, December 11, 1886, Mr. Payson of Illinois, on behalf of the Committee on Public Lands, called up the bill declaring a forfeiture of the Ontonagon and Brule River land grant. In detailing the circumstances of the grant Mr. Payson declared that from the organization of the Ontonagon and Brule River Company no step had ever been taken by it which did not indicate that that organization had been purely speculative and effected for the purpose of getting land from the General Government. It had been an attempt at bare-faced robbery from its inception down to the present time. Referring to the statement made by persons interested in the road, that it had been accepted by commissioners and reported upon as having been built in first-class style, he asserted that miles of the road had no other ballast than ice and snow, which, melting in spring, left the rails held in suspension eight inches above the ground. In support of his assertion, he produced photographs of various sections of the road and commented upon them, much to the amusement of the House. A bridge, as depicted by the photograph, he declared to be humped like a camel and backed like a whale. A section of a mile in length showed but one railroad tie; while a 250-foot cut was shown as being filled with logs and brush. The bill was passed without division. It forfeits 384,600 acres.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong in the relation of landlord and tenant, which should excite a prejudice against the landlord; on the contrary, many landlords have been a blessing to the communities in which they lived; but our land system is a conspicuous part of a grandly false social system based on pure selfishness, which makes all men jealous competitors, and destroys the spirit of fraternity.

Our social system tends ever to make the rich richer and the poor poorer, and the struggle in Ireland is but the forerunner of a movement that will extend around the globe. Is there no remedy for the evils? Indeed there is! Sixty years of thought have made me familiar with the evils and the remedies. Some of the remedies are coming to the front at present. All will in time be presented in the JOURNAL OF MAN.

Land reform is but one of the great measures that progress demands. The first and greatest is a PERFECT EDUCATION for all, moral and industrial. The second is SPIRITUAL RELIGION. The third is JUSTICE TO WOMAN. The fourth, which is JUSTICE IN LEGISLATION, includes land reform, financial reform, and many other reforms. The fifth is INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION. The sixth is TEMPERANCE.

The first reform includes all the others. The second would ultimately bring all things right, and so would the third in a longer lapse of time.

ANTHROPOLOGY is the intellectual guidance into all reforms, and therefore should precede all. Hence it is the leading theme of this Journal.

THE SINALOA COLONY.

Mankind would be one family or group of families, if the principles of Jesus could be imparted to the human race. But the robber races that occupy this globe at present are intensely hostile in feeling to that life of Christian love which is commanded in the books which they honor with their lips.

The so-called civilized races of to-day are as intensely barbarian at heart, notwithstanding the superficial varnish of literary civilization, as the hordes of Attila and Genghis Khan. Witness the attitude of Germany and France , each eagerly preparing for a deadly conflict.

Yet in all ages there have been those whom nature has qualified for a better life, who wish to live in harmony, and turn with weariness and disgust from the present forms of avaricious strife, rivalry, and fraud. If the best of these could be gathered in one community, a better state of society could be organized.

The grandest and most hopeful co-operative scheme yet proposed is that of Mr. Albert K. Owen, entitled the "Credit Foncier of Sinaloa," which has been established at the harbor of Topolobampo, in the state of Sinaloa, on the western coast of Mexico, where a large and liberal grant has been obtained from the Mexican government for the Credit Foncier Company, chartered by the state of Colorado, Mr. Owen being chairman of the Board of Directors. Its headquarters were at rooms 7 and 8, 32 Nassau Street, New York, and the members of the community are already gathered in considerable numbers at Topolobampo. The Credit Foncier of Jan. 11 reports over 4,800 persons enlisted for the colony, and over sixteen thousand shares of stock sold.

This is not a unitary community, in which the individuality of the members is lost, but a co-operative corporation, owning its lands as a society, and abolishing at once the primary evils of land monopoly and a false financial system. As stated by Mr. E. Howland, "the community is responsible for the health, usefulness, individuality, and security of each member, and at the same time each will feel secure in his social and individual rights in the existence of the collective ownership and management for public utilities and conveniences, instead of the disorganized chaos in which to-day we live."

"As we shall have to, at least during this generation depend upon the colonization of persons who have been subject to the influences of society as it is, we would only say, that the new truths concerning moral education contained in 'The New Education' by Mr. J. R. Buchanan, have been carefully examined by the writer of this, and its most important lessons shall be applied in the organization of our schools; for the power of love can be unquestionably applied, not only as a cure for the evils produced inevitably by the system of competition, but also as a miraculous agent in aiding the progress of society to an inconceivably higher plane of human life."

The newspaper in exposition of the society entitled, "The Credit Foncier of Sinaloa," published at a year, at Hammonton, New Jersey, will be issued hereafter at Topolobampo, Mexico. A report descriptive of the site of the colony and the surrounding country and a map of the colony's site may be obtained by addressing the editor, E. Howland, at Topolobampo, Mexico.

While the Journal is going through the press, the colonists are gathering in large numbers, and by our next issue we may have some account of the commencement of this noble enterprise.

Its founder, Mr. A. K. Owen, is a gentleman of great energy and enterprise, guided by noble principles, a skilful surveyor and engineer. About fourteen years ago he made extensive exploration in Mexico, especially on its Pacific Coast, discovered and reported Topolobampo Bay, and introduced the scheme of the Norfolk & Topolobampo Railroad, which he urged upon the attention of Congress, winning the approbation of committees, but finally defeated by the great railroad corporations. He took an active part in Mexican affairs, forming gigantic plans for the public welfare, by a syndicate at the head of which was Gen. Torbert, which were defeated by a shipwreck in which Gen. Torbert was lost, and himself narrowly escaped death. He then organized with the co-operation of Gen. Grant, Gen. Butler, and other distinguished men, the "Texas, Topolobampo & Pacific Railroad and Telegraph Company," and obtained a concession of 2,000 miles of railroad and a subsidy of ,000,000. Hon. Wm. Windom was president, and Mr. Owen chief engineer. In 1873 he located a hundred miles of the road from Topolobampo eastwardly, and two years ago the construction commenced. Thus in the midst of a life of great activity and experience in engineering, finance, politics, reform, and travel, Mr. Owen, as a practical and skilful manager of great undertakings, inspired by a strong democratic philanthropy, has laid the plan of a co-operative colony on the basis of liberal concessions from the Mexican government, and opened a field in which his democratic ideas of human rights, of land, labor, finance, hygiene, freedom, and general reform, can have full scope.

Mr. Owen's ideas and plans are stated in a book of two hundred pages, published by Jno. W. Lovell, 14 Vesey Street, New York, and sent by mail for thirty cents. It is not a systematic treatise, but a miscellaneous collection of documents which give a good deal of information.

The Topolobampo scheme is one requiring great skill and executive ability in the directors, as well as a harmonious and energetic spirit in the colonists. The climate, soil, and opportunities are no doubt the best that have ever been accorded to a scheme of co-operation, and when its success has been realized, it may be accounted the most important social event of the century, for it will be the dawn of peace to a warring world, the promise of harmony between all the restless and convulsive elements of civilized society.

HEALTH AND LONGEVITY.

Upon these subjects the JOURNAL OF MAN has a new physiological doctrine to present, which may be stated in the initial number, and will be illustrated hereafter.

In the volume of "Therapeutic Sarcognomy," which was so speedily and entirely sold upon its publication, it was clearly demonstrated that the doctrine of vitality taught at this time in all medical colleges is essentially erroneous, and that human life is not a mere aggregate of the properties of the tissues of the human body, as a house is an aggregate of the physical properties of bricks and wood, but is an influx, of which the body is but the channel and recipient.

It has been only within the last ten years, and as the sequel of investigations of the seat of life beginning in 1835, that I succeeded in ascertaining the absolute falsity of the doctrines on this subject maintained by all scientific biologists at the present time, and demonstrating that the human body is only a tenement, of which life is the builder, and which drops into decay when life deserts it to meet its more congenial home in a nobler realm.

It is not therefore in the physical but in the spiritual constitution that the real basis of his character, his health, and longevity is to be found, for the primitive germ or protoplasm of man cannot be distinguished from that of a quadruped or bird. It is the invisible and incalculable life element that contains the potentiality or possibility of existence as a quadruped or a man, as a virtuous or vicious, and as a long lived or short lived, being. The life element of the germ limits the destiny of the being. That life element is invisible.

This truth, however, does not contradict the truth of development and the capacity of science to estimate the probable health or longevity of an individual from his organization, for the life force organizes a body in accordance with its own character; and the development of the entire person shows the character of the vital force as modified by the environment of food, air, motives, and education. The brain, no less than the body,--indeed, more fully than the body,--shows the elements of the life and the tendency to health and longevity, or the reverse, upon which an expert cranioscopist can give an opinion.

In accordance with the doctrine of influx and in accordance with the functions of the brain we are compelled to recognize health and longevity as more closely associated with the higher than the lower faculties,--the moral rather than the animal nature. This is the reason that woman, with a feebler body but a stronger moral nature, ranks higher in health and longevity than man; and although from four to sixteen per cent more males are born, women are generally in predominance, often from two to six per cent. The researches of the Bureau of Statistics of Vienna show that about one third more women than men reach an advanced age. De Verga asserts that of sudden deaths there are about 100 women to 780 men. The inevitable inference is that the cultivation of virtue or religion is the surest road to longevity, and the indulgence in vice and crime the most certain ruin to the body and soul.

There is a curious illustration of these principles in the evidence of life insurance companies in reference to spirit drinking and abstinence. The oldest two life insurance companies of England, the General Provident and the United Kingdom, have made records for forty-five years which distinguish the total abstainers and the moderate drinkers. Drunkards they do not insure at all. The care with which lives are selected for insurance results in a smaller rate of mortality among the insured than in the entire population. This gain was but slight among those classed as moderate drinkers, for their mortality was only three per cent less than the average mortality; but among the total abstainers it was thirty-one per cent less. Thus the proportion of deaths among moderate drinkers compared to that of total abstainers is as 97 to 69.

The temperance advocate would assume that this was owing entirely to the deleterious effects of alcohol, and that is partially true; but there is a deeper reason in the difference of the two classes of men. The man in whom the appetites are well controlled by the higher energies of his nature, and who has therefore no inclination to gluttony or drunkenness, has a better organization for health and longevity than he in whom the appetites have greater relative power, and who seeks the stimulus of alcohol to relieve his nervous depression. The inability or unwillingness to live without stimulation is a mark of weakness, which is an impairment of health; and this weakness predisposes to excessive and irregular indulgence, though it may not go so far as intoxication.

In future numbers the true basis and indications of longevity in man will be fully illustrated.

The attainable limits of human longevity are generally underrated by the medical profession and by popular opinion. Instead of the Scriptural limit of threescore and ten I would estimate twice that amount, or 140 years, as the ideal age of healthy longevity, when mankind shall have been bred and trained with the same wise energy that has been expended on horses and cattle. Of the present scrub race, a very large number ought never to have been born, and ought not to be allowed to transmit their physical and moral deficiencies to posterity.

There are many fine examples of longevity at this time. The famous French chemist Chevreul has just completed his hundredth year at Paris, in the full vigor of his intellect.

We have similar examples in the United States. Mrs. Celia Monroe, a colored woman, who died a few weeks ago at Kansas City was believed to be 125. She was going about a few days before her death.

Farmer O'Leary of Elkton, Minnesota, is over 112. Noah Raby of Plainfield, New Jersey, is in his 115th year. He supports himself by his work in the summer, and looks like a man of 80.

Of very recent deaths we have: Amos Hunt of Barnesville, Georgia, who died at 105, leaving twenty-three of his twenty-eight children. Mrs. Raymond of Wilton, Connecticut, was still living recently in her 106th year. Ben Evans, part Indian, part negro, a great hunter of Wilkes County, Georgia, died at 107; baptized after he was 100. Mrs. Betsy L. Moody died on the 4th of July in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, aged 104. Wm. Henry Williams of Cincinnati, died a few months ago at 102. James Fitzgerald of Prince Edwards Island, over a hundred years old, is still able to work. Mrs. Lydia Van Ranst lately died on East 16th Street, New York, aged 100 years and ten months; and Mrs. Johanna O'Sullivan in Boston in her 103d year. Mrs. Betsy Perkins of Rome, N. Y., was apparently in excellent health when she died suddenly at the breakfast table in her 101st year. Rev. Hugh Call died in Wayne County, Indiana, at 104. After his hundredth year he once fancied death was near, and sent for his family to see him die; but when they arrived in midwinter, they found the old man busy cutting wood to make a fire for his visitors.

Many of these examples show that the faculties of both soul and body ought to be maintained in good condition to the last, as fruit falls from the trees ripe and perfect. When we leave our earthly tenement, we ought to leave it in a respectable condition, and not carry any infirmities from it to the better world.

REMARKABLE FASTING.

"Signor Merlatti, a young Italian, completed in December his fifty days' fast, at the Grand Hotel, Paris, in time to enjoy the festivities of the holidays. Unlike his rival, Succi, he partook of no mysterious elixir, but existed on water alone. At the conclusion of his feat, he was so nearly dead that the surgeons were anticipating by way of dissection more light on the effects of privation from food. He was barely able to move about without help. His stomach was unable to hold any solids, and at the big banquet over which he presided he could not have had a very convivial time, as he was unable to take a mouthful of food. He has since gradually recovered. Succi, meanwhile, is engaged in another fast. He fences and takes any amount of exercise, to show that his mysterious liquid is what does it."

This is a little over the record of Dr. Tanner, but the result is very different. Dr. Tanner came out in good condition, with a splendid and healthy appetite. In the first twenty-four hours he ate something every hour or two, indulging largely in watermelons, milk, apples, beefsteak, potatoes, English ale, and Hungarian wine. He gained eight and a half pounds weight in thirty hours. Everybody was astonished, and the doctors were confounded; the crowd cheered, and the music resounded as the fast was finished and the feasting began in Clarendon Hall, the doctor being in as good health and spirits as when he began, except as to physical strength.

Now it is proper to mention what I believe has not before been published, having been carefully concealed by Dr. Tanner. As he was encountering the whole force of a brutal prejudice in the medical profession, and trickery and falsehood were used to defeat him by Dr. Hammond and Dr. Landon C. Gray, Dr. Tanner did not think it safe to elicit any additional hostility by confessing his mediumship.

The organization of Dr. Tanner was not such as I would have selected for a fasting performance, and he did not undertake it on his own resources alone. He was thoroughly a medium, and, when in my parlor, Indian spirits would take control of him, and carry him through a lively performance, speaking through his lips, and promising to sustain him through the fast; and they did. I have no doubt that with a suitable organization, such as is more frequently found in India than in America, a fast could be sustained by spirit power for six or twelve months. Indeed, there are records of such fasts in the old medical authors, which are omitted in all recent works. The spirit of dogmatic scepticism had carried the medical profession generally into such a depth of ignorance on these subjects that Dr. Landon C. Gray declared that a forty days' fast had never occurred, and that if Dr. Tanner attempted it, it must be assumed "that he will cheat at every turn."

The kind of sentiment cultivated by colleges in the medical profession was shown by the deportment of the medical visitors. The report of the fast says:--

"The most curious episodes, probably, on the whole, were afforded by the appearance of sceptics, and members of the medical profession from the country. Many of the latter came long distances to satisfy their respective curiosity, or vent their scepticism, as the case might be. As a rule they were long-visaged, not a few were unkempt, and many were downright seedy in wearing apparel. Almost invariably they insisted upon boring the doctor with numberless questions, many of which were idle. The majority displayed ignorance, and it might truthfully be said, they were rude almost without exception. One man insisted upon feeling Dr. Tanner's arms and legs; another wanted to feel his pulse; a third demanded a view of his tongue; a fourth declared food must be given to him surreptitiously, else he would be dead; a fifth wanted to search his pockets; the sixth asserted his professional reputation that there was fraud about the whole business; the seventh had some patent surgical, or other appliance, which he wished to test upon the patient; and yet another wanted to analyze even the water he used, before the faster drank it.

Before the fasting began I witnessed an amusing specimen of the medical scepticism. One of the medical visitors inspected the hall closely, and finding in the back part that a piece of nearly worn out carpet remained on the floor, proceeded to rip it up and tear it away, as if he suspected there might be a trap door concealed.

Medical education has been miserably cramped and benighted by the total ignoring of the nobler element of the human constitution.

CEREBRAL PSYCHOLOGY.

The comprehensive system of science developed by experiment on the brain, perfected by psychometric exploration, demonstrated by pathognomy, corroborated by personal experiences and the sensations of the head, enforced and illustrated by the study of comparative development throughout the animal kingdom, based upon anatomy, illustrated by pathology, and proven by every examination of a living head, as well as every scientific experiment upon the brain in sensitive and intelligent persons, has now been for forty years in the hot crucible of experimental physiological investigation by vivisection, ablation, autopsy, and electricity, and still remains as the solid gold of eternal science.

Under these circumstances it is necessary and practicable, since my "System of Anthropology" has been entirely out of the market for thirty years, to present a concise exposition of cerebral psychology and physiology, to satisfy those who perceive the inadequacy of the Gallian system, and who are aware that my discoveries have thoroughly revolutionized as well as enlarged cerebral science, rendering the old term phrenology inadequate to express its present status.

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