WCP3443

[1]¹

Ocean City, N[ew]. J[ersey].

July 27^th. 1889.

Alfred Russel Wallace, LL. D.,² F.L.S.³

Dear Sir,

It is certainly very difficult to conceive of a spaceless thing, or a thing without space relations, because the experiences of ordinary life arise [sic] entirely from impressions received by means of our sense organs which are themselves material, i.e. extended in space, and can be acted upon only by material things, as some things as develop [sic] in space or assumes extension in space.

All our perceptions of external things originate in this way and these perceptions form the very foundation of our "concept of space."

However perceiving by mediation of sense organs is not the only way of perceiving. During acts of introspection, self-observation, recollection, reasoning &c. we also perceive, but the objects then perceived are internal objects or psychic modifications which are spaceless [2] in themselves; our activity then is a spaceless psychic operation.

This spaceless activity can further be demonstrated as I hope to have satisfactorily done in my book⁴ by the many cases where perceiving takes place without the aid of sense organs, but alone by the immediate action of the psychic sensory forces, as in somnambulism, clairvoyance &c. &c., proving the spacelessness of the psychic forces, i.e. of the soul, and the spaceless action of these forces.

This, however, does not mean to say that these spaceless psychic forces must always be thought to be without space relations. On the contrary, as they build, or rather externalise themselves by building their own body in order to live and thrive in this material world, that is to receive the material impressions from, & act upon, the lowest end of the chain of granted forces of which the corporeal world consists — it is evident that our soul-forces are more or less united with these material forces, that they share in corporeal [3]⁵ space relations, — for without these sensory experiences we would not even have a concept or idea of "space."

Yet this "sharing" in space relations is only an accompaniment of the soul’s action through or by means of corporeal sense organs. If these organs are paralised [sic] or made inactive as it happens in France or some somnambulic [sic] states, the freed psychic sensory forces will perceive & act independently of space as I have abundantly shown in my book.

But so long as we live in this material world in a normal way, the soul continues to be united with spacious forces as if they were one, yet even during this normal state of union there occasionally happen breaks, or fits of supranormal states in which the soul forces become freed from their connection with the sense organs when they show their inborn independence of all space and space relations.

Excuse this weak attempt at an explana [4] -tion of my views in regard to the spacelessness of our soul as an answer to your kind & valuable remarks in your letter. I should like to have expressed myself more fully & more clearly, but I have been in such poor health these last weeks — I may say months, that it takes all my strength to do anything at all.

I have been since a month or more living at the seashore, trying to restore my health, but have not greatly succeeded thus far.

Your latest work "Darwinism"⁶ I have read with great satisfaction, because it supplies so ably what Darwin’s⁷ exposition constantly calls for but never gives — the existing connection between the corporeal & spiritual world.

About the 1^st of September a. c.[?] <or thereabouts> I shall leave here & go again to my home, N^o. [number] 121 North 10^th Street, Philadelphia. With kindest regards

Yours very respectfully | C G Raue.⁸ [signature]