INVISIBILITY.
WE should like to know precisely what people mean when they talk about" invisibility." Journalists and reporters are all using the word just now about the Whitechapel mur- derer, and using it in nearly its highest signification. They say that he disappears as if he had "the gift of invisibility," or that he "comes and goes as if he had eaten fern-seed, and were able to be invisible at will," or that he "passes invisible through the crowd ;" but we doubt if they ever think out the sense of the words they are using. Indeed, we are not quite
sure if in modern English they have a sense which could be accurately defined in a dictionary. So far as we have noticed, about half the people who use the word "invisible," mean by it impalpable; and think, if they ever think at all, that an in- visible being is one who is not only unseeable, but untouch- able, unhearable, untastable, and unsmelLsble,—who has, in short, none of the ordinary attributes of matter, or none perceptible to human senses. That is the most perfect kind of invisibility, but involves a near approach to a 'contradiction in terms. Invisibility of that kind would imply that a body could be a body and a spirit at bne and the same time; that a stone, so to speak, could be also air and yet remain a stone. The word " invisi- ble " implies, as used by those who assign to it this im- possible meaning, that the man continues to be, yet is not; that he is unchanged, but all his attributes are changed ; that he is a material entity, yet immaterial; a body, yet incorporeal ; that he is, in fact, two irreconcilable things at once. This would be a simple impossibility even to a supernatural being, but that most men, when they explain their thought to themselves, put in a rider, and say, not that the man is and is not, but that he is, yet is not to the per- ception of other men. That, of course, is possible, and, indeed, is within usual experience, there being entities, as, for example, Jupiter's moons, which are for some men, and are not for .others,—that is, which have for the senses of the latter no existence. The other half of mankind use the word in a much more limited sense, and mean by " invisible " only that which is not or cannot be seen with the eyes. This is clearly the meaning of the phrase used by St. Luke of the disciples whom Christ joined after the Resurrection, "Their eyes were holden ;" and it is the sense implied throughout by Apuleius. It is the usual, also, though not the invariable sense, of the word in most modern or Middle Age stories, phantoms and fairies possessing outline at all events, and existence, even when they cannot be perceived. Invisible things smell, too, very often in monkish legends, and we have read somewhere a terribly gruesome story of a person who passes along unseen yet casts a shadow, the most eerie conception it is well possible to imagine. In our own time, most " invisible " heroes of romance avoid consciously the persons they pass; they have all the attributes of men except that of self-revela- tion in the sunlight, and they can occasionally indict physical injury, Michael Scott, for example, in "The Lay," inflicting on Gylbin, while himself still unseen, a most well-deserved box on the ear.
Imaginative people break their own laws pretty frequently; but the second is, we think, the more popular view of invisibility, though not the one accepted by esoteric Buddhists; and thus limited, the miracle involved in the condition becomes limited too. Not only is the power of producing invisibility not impossible as involving a contradiction in terms, or unthink- able, but it is a little difficult to conceive of a supernatural being who does not possess it. It is nothing but a power of sus- pending for a moment a particular action of the human brain, or the human intelligence, if that be essentially non-material. We all say, "We see John," as if that were one operation, but in reality two must be performed. The image of John must be reflected on the retina, and the brain and intelligence must recognise the reflection. Until the second operation has been performed, the first has on the mind no effect, might, in truth, as well not have occurred. We all know that in certain moods and under certain circumstances, we can see without seeing; and this occasionally with the strange addition that, although we have not "seen," in the sense of becoming percipient, we are yet aware that we have seen in some more exclusively material method. The phenomenon must happen constantly in a very extreme way in the case of some somnam- bulists, the eyes being wide open, and the retina therefore receiving everything, yet there being, properly speaking, no sight. The second operator, whose aid is indispensable, is temporarily locked up. All things are seen, and yet they are in the truest sense "invisible." The phenomena of somnambu- lism have been produced, in certain conditions supposed to be "hysterical," by one will acting on another, and there is, therefore, no difficulty in believing that a stronger will, a higher intelligence—higher, we mean, in the seale of power— could suspend perception in a whole crowd. A clever conjurer often does something of the kind, though in an infinitesimal sort of way. The writer once saw a dozen persons, certainly
up to the average in intelligence, sit staring at a five-franc piece of the Second Empire placed on a china plate. The conjurer had promised to replace the five-franc piece by one of the First Republic without being seen, and of course he did it. Twenty-four keen eyes, all belonging to persons who had been forewarned, and who were eager to detect the trick, had been defeated in the way which Robert Houdin explains. The mental attention, not necessarily the eyes, had been called for a second or two away from the plate, and in that moment the substitution had been effected, nor could any one present state with the least certainty when the distraction had occurred. All that was clear was that for a second the coin of the Second Empire must have been "invisible." That "eyes should be holden," seems to us the least incredible or in any way stupendous of all miracles.
In an escape like that of the Whitechapel miscreant, even if he passed—as he may have done—straight through a con- siderable crowd, there is nothing extraordinary or in the least transcending the regular circumstances of every-day life. It seems to us remarkable because we know what he is ; but no one in the crowd could know. No one in it probably even saw him. We do not really see one-tenth of the people we pass in the street even if we look at them, because the second operation necessary to true seeing is not performed. The intelligence is uninterested, and remains passive, and there is no sight. If nothing called attention to him, the Whitechapel murderer would in a crowd or a well-frequented street be as invisible as if he possessed the prerogative of which the story- tellers have dreamed. Those who met him would see him as little as if they were sleep-walking. To secure that immunity from the operation of intelligence, however, the man must have given no provocation to the intelligence to wake up,—that is, he must either have presented no peculiarity distinguishing him from the crowd, or he must have presented some one peculiarity which prevented thought, when afterwards excited, from fixing upon him in connection with a crime. In other words, he cannot have seemed drunk, or have been excessively agitated, or have walked at an extraordinary pace, or have had blood visibly upon his person. (It is alleged that a butcher would not be noticed even if he had blood upon him ; but that is not true, unless he was in butcher's costume, which there is a strong consensus of evidence, all given, however, by witnesses who speak of a time before the crime, that he was not.) He must, if this is the explanation, have looked exactly like anybody else, so like, that the eyes which saw, nevertheless did not see him. The police, on this hypothesis, are mistaken in expecting a clue from evidence visible on the murderer himself. We should, however, for ourselves, think the influencing cause of the murderer's "invisibility" was rather the second one,—that he was protected by some disguise which has ever since blinded the pedestrians' mental eyes. That is to say, some- thing has dissociated him in their minds altogether, and as it were finally, from the idea of the crime. The something, it has been suggested, might be a policeman's uniform ; but that could not be, for the uniform, though it would blind the crowd, would instantly wake every other policeman into fixed and curious attention. How came a policeman there at that moment, a stranger, and off his beat ? It might be a woman's dress, always the most complete of disguises; and it is just possible that the murderer burnt his own dress, and wore that of his victim, and that the witnesses who say they saw her alive, saw only a kind of simulacrum of her. That, however, is most improbable, and there are only two other dissociating circumstances, of which we can think at least, that would blind an English crowd, and produce on the murderer's behalf the effect of invisibility. One is some expression of face entirely inconsistent with crime, such as has occasionally, though very rarely, belonged to the bloodthirsty—we take it Nero looked gentle, and St. Just certainly did—and the other is an appearance of solid respectability, such as sheltered for months that amazing criminal, Renwick, the "monster" of our grandfathers' days. That, and perhaps that only, would act in an English crowd like the possession of the fern-seed.
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