Many Powers of Intuition in Life

1910

By Lyne S. Metcalfe

A surface motorman awakened a train of thought not long ago when he stopped his ear shortly at a crossing. There was apparently no one there waiting to get on; a woman was standing on the curb not even looking toward the moving car, yet when the car came to this corner the motorman brought it to a standstill and sure enough the women hurried out of the crowd and clambered aboard.

"How'd you know that woman wanted to get on?" he was asked as the controller was thrown on again and the car started with a jerk.

"Just felt it," he laughed, "didn't know it. A fellow's affected that way in this business. How many people nowadays signal the motorman when they want him to stop? It's some sort of power, I guess, that tells me. I can't explain just what it is."

The patient knight of the motor voiced one of the most bewildering psychological truths found in the entire downtown propaganda, where about every nip and tuck of the human habit, custom or peculiarity finds a shining place. Taking metropolitan humanity as a whole, there are few who do not use intuition in the course of the average workday.

A certain teller in a large Chicago bank recognizes intuition so a faithful and valuable ally, one that can be put to good uses, though one that is not infallible. A "J. Rufus Wallingford" may stroll into this man's bank, toss a thousand dollar check over the counter in a blasé manner and something may "tell" the teller that the check isn't any good.

"I just feel it," he explains this strange power at intuition.

And the check may be turned down or, on the other hand, something may "tell" the cashier that the man is good — he just feels it.

Scoffers are referred to the average policeman.

Does the city detective always know a crook when he plucks him out of a downtown crowd, when the man's back perhaps is turned to the officer of the law?

He feels that the shoulders and neck ahead of him — the head crowned with a battered derby — is wanted. Often he does not know the crook's name and could not tell why he arrests him until the man is hauled back to the station and his photo is found gracing the limelight in the rogues' gallery some months or years back, the intuition in a case of this sort being extremely strong, as records prove amply.

Capacity of the Brain

1906

By Dr. Frederick Peterson

Authorities differ as to the capacity of the average brain to receive the impressions of a lifetime. It is pretty well believed that there is in the brain a centre of conservation distinct from the centre of perception. We of course know nothing as to the nature of the relation of brain cells to percepts and conservation, but we do know that there must be a relation. The latest researches (Hammerberg and Thomson) show that the number of cells in the brain is nine billion two hundred million. All stimuli, external (through the five senses) or internal (through processes), must leave some trace upon these cells, chemical, physical, or dynamic. These stimuli are composed of all sorts of percepts; words and sounds heard; things and words seen; objects felt, tasted, smelled; sensations perceived in our own bodies; thoughts pushing upward into consciousness. And a little reflection will show how innumerable such imprints must be in the course of a single waking day.

Even without reading the resident of a city must receive an incalculable number of impressions upon his brain every 24 hours. The reading centre of the brain occupies a comparative small area in the back of the left hemisphere, and consequently must possess a very small portion of the nine billion cells referred to above. We can only guess at the number, but a fair estimate would be about a twentieth, or say five hundred millions which in a lifetime of 60 years would allow us about 25,000 cells daily for the perception and conservation of words and sentences read. These figures may have no scientific value, but at any rate they emphasize a very important fact, and that is that our brain capacity is limited and that we should be sparing of the cells we daily squander. — Colliers' Weekly.

Helen Keller — How a Deaf and Blind Girl Talks

1896

The hundreds of personal friends of Helen Keller, the totally blind and totally deaf girl, whose development and whose attainments are nothing short of marvelous, and the tens of thousands who have become interested in her will be pleased to learn of the remarkable progress she has been making within the last year.

Not only does she use her voice constantly in communicating with those about her, but she has reached that state where those who wish to talk with her speak to her as they would to any one in full possession of all his senses.

Miss Keller no longer uses her fingers to talk to others. She uses them now in conversation simply to listen to others who speak to her. By placing her fingers on the lips and throat of those who are talking to her she not only almost instantly "hears" words that are difficult to pronounce clearly but she is also enabled to detect the various shadings of vowel sounds that many persons even with a keenly developed ear, cannot pronounce, after a teacher. — Demorest's Magazine.

Hale, Hearty on 86th Birthday, Pretty Good "For One So Old"

New York, 1911

HALE AND HEARTY ON 86TH BIRTHDAY

Mrs. Elizabeth VanKeuren, of 235 Monhagen avenue this city, recently celebrated her eighty-sixth birthday anniversary. Mrs. VanKeuren's old age does not stop her from being quite active. When the Times-Press representative called upon her she had just finished peeling potatoes for dinner.

"I am in perfectly good health with the exception of an occasional attack of rheumatism," said Mrs. VanKeuren.

Her hearing, for one so old, is excellent, the only sense which seemed to be impaired is her seeing, she being totally blind in one eye.

Mrs. VanKeuren's husband, who died a few years ago, lived to reach the ago of ninety years, and every member of Mrs. VanKeuren's family lived to be older than eighty-four years of age.

—Middletown Daily Times-Press, Middletown, NY, Aug. 5, 1911, p. 5.

What Do People See, Feel When They're Hanged?

1878

The Sensations of Hanging.

Some time since, says an exchange, the American press was discussing the question: "Does it hurt a man to hang him?" The conclusion arrived at seemed to be that hanging was a painless death.

Now some of the English magazines are speculating on the sensations of a hanged person, and they almost make out that hanging is rather a pleasurable and desirable operation. One person who was hung, to all intents and purposes, and afterwards revived, declared that he felt no pain, his only sensations were of fire before his eyes, which changed first to black and then to sky-blue. These colors are even a source of pleasure. A culprit who was revived when almost dead, complained that, having lost all pain in an instant, he had been taken from a light of which the charm defied description. Another criminal, who escaped through the breaking of the halter, said that, after a second or two of suffering, a light appeared, and across it a most beautiful avenue of trees."

All agree that the uneasiness is quite momentary, that a pleasurable feeling succeeds, that colors of various hues start up before the eyes, and that these having been gazed at for a limited space, the rest is oblivion. If this is the case, murderers may regret the law that consigns them to a living tomb instead of treating them to an entertaining chromatic exhibition.

The Whiskers of Cats

1878

Use of Whiskers to a Cat.

The sense which of all others is most deficient in the cat is that of smell. In this she differs most markedly from the dog. It is said that a piece of meat may be placed in close proximity to a cat, but that, if it is kept covered up she will fail to distinguish it.

This want is, however, partly compensated for by an extremely delicate sense of touch, which is possessed, to a remarkable extent, by the whiskers, or vibrissae, as well as by the general surface of the skin. These bristles are possessed to a greater or less extent by all cats, and are simply greatly developed hairs, having enormously swollen roots, covered with a layer of muscular fibres, with which delicate nerves are connected. By means of these latter, the slightest touch on the extremity of the whiskers, is instantly transmitted to the brain.

Those organs are of the greatest possible value to the cat in its nocturnal campaigns. When it is deprived of the guidance afforded by light it makes its way by the sense of touch, the fine whiskers touching against every object the cat passes, and thus acting in precisely the same manner as a blind man's stick, though with infinitely greater sensibility. Imagine a blind man with not one stick, but with a couple of dozen, of exquisite fineness, and these not held in his hand but embedded in his skin, so that his nerves come into direct contact with them instead of having a layer of skin between, and some notion may be formed of the way in which a cat uses its whiskers.

The Possible Intelligence of Plants

1914

SENSES OF PLANTS.

A Theory That Flowers See and Hear and May Even Talk.

Jean Viand-Bruant, who is one of the most famous French horticulturists, has just published a little book on flowers, in which he advances the theory (I believe it is not entirely novel) that flowers both see and hear. As a young man, he says, he began to study flowers, for which he has always had a passion, and he sought to understand the habits of the blooms which he cultivated. When he saw the growing plant reach out toward the necessary support he asked himself whether the action was the result of volition and whether the plant had eyes.

M. Viand-Bruaut is now apparently convinced that flowers both hear and see. There are some that are sensitive to anaesthetic substances, ether in particular, which suggests the existence of a nervous system, like that of a nervous woman. And he would even credit them with something analogous to the power of speech.

"One knows," he writes, "that the perfume of flowers is a manifestation of vegetable life, a living radiation. Perfume is as much a vibration as an olfactory sensation. The perfume is the voice of the flower. A bouquet is a wordless romance. Each perfume or, rather, each odorous sensation corresponds with a certain rate of vibration. There is an analogy between the perceptions of sound, light and scent. The strong scent corresponds with the deep notes, while the delicate odors correspond with the shrill notes." — Paris Cor. Cincinnati Enquirer.

Your Nose Is Safest Guard Against Poison

1920

Impure Foods Can Be Detected by Sense of Smell

It may not be an elegant thing to do, but if people would smell their food before eating it there would be fewer cases of poisoning, scientists declare. One's nose can generally be depended upon to protect him from injurious foods, if only he would follow the dictates of his sense of smell.

In making an investigation in connection with a case of ptomaine poisoning recently, the experts stated that "in every case known the canned food that contained the dangerous bacilli had an abnormal and usually offensive odor." The ripe olives that have caused such disasters lately do not have an agreeable scent. Where meat causes the trouble, a tainted odor is easily perceptible. So it seems that all one need to is to follow his nose, or at least be guided by what it suggests to him.

"Nature knew what she was going when she gave us the sense of smell. It is more inherent than the sense of taste or of vision. It was the only way we had of telling what was good to eat, in the beginning, for neither the eyes nor the sense of taste is so precise in the matter of protecting us from harm. The so-called lower animals still depend upon the sense of small to protect them from noxious vegetation, and we have not gotten so far away from the animal that we can ignore Nature's greatest of all safeguards."

--The Saturday Blade, Chicago, March 27, 1920, page 7.

The Human Nose is An Apologetic Pimple

1902--

The Human Nose

The human nose is an apologetic pimple compared with the magnificent organ of the horse or dog. Our sense of smell is, when contrasted with our sight and hearing, singularly undiscriminating.

We can arrange sounds into series; we know E is between D and F; we appreciate octaves and harmonies. Similarly we can put the colors into order, decide upon the amount of blue in a purple and get almost to emotion at the sight of a white star in the blue of a summer twilight or of the amber sunlight glinting between the blades of glass.

But this serial arrangement, this sorting and selective choice, is entirely beyond our rudimentary senses of smell. To us the idea of the scent of the violet being a rich harmony or the suggestion that the frying of onions is a discord or that patchouli and the new mown bay are pleasant things in different times and keys sounds utter nonsense. Our noses are entirely too dull to effect the analysis necessary before scents can be distinguished as complex and sorted and recombined so as to be made aesthetic pleasure. — London Globe.



Strong Monosyllables

Instructors in the art of literary composition usually condemn a string of monosyllables, but in the well known hymn "Lead, Kindly Light," written by a master of the English language, you may could thirty consecutive words of one syllable only. They offend neither the eye nor the ear.

Milton often uses a series of monosyllables. In the second book of "Paradise Lost" we have

The fiend
O'er bog or steep, through strait, rough, dense or rare,
With head, hands, wings or feet, pursues his way
And swims or sinks or wades or creeps or flies.

Such lines are not uncommon in the book:

Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens and shades of death.

And again:

Of neither sea nor shore nor air nor fire. — Notes and Queries.

--The Marion Daily Star, Marion, Ohio, February 27, 1902, page 7.