A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

each in turn Lockwood elaborated his central conception of the “molecular character and
reciprocal relations of nature’s energies.” 78
This expostulation was put to use in support of his
basic contention captured in the book’s opening salvo, directed “TO THE WORLD’S
THINKERS”:
The value of the term MOLECULAR introducing our theme, will readily be accepted
when it is understood that all cosmic energies, whether considered as physical, electrical
or magnetic, have their co-relation and affinity expressed under the name molecular; and
if we shall be able to demonstrate that all mental and psychic action, is also the result of
molecular change and impression, and that these activities belong to the list of nature’s
co-related energies; if we succeed in extending the boundary line of these related factors,
we hope to be able to furnish the explanatory key to psychic phenomena, both ancient
and modern, and to establish the truth of intelligent communication between the realms of
life visible and invisible, upon the postulate of ordinary thought transference – the
postulate of molecular induction. 79
It is this postulate of molecular induction, so Lockwood argued, that rendered both the
contemporary technological wonders of telegraphy, telephony et al. and the psychic
manifestations of Spiritualism explicable. In short, the conclusion that he reached was that “all
social intercourse, all thought transference, whether by vocal speech, by telephone, by physical
or mental telegraphy, is molecular in the character of its transmission and its mode of impress.” 80
Again we see the implicit tension within Spiritualism’s attempt to articulate the world of spirit in
an empirical frame. While Lockwood’s molecular hypothesis constructs such a frame, its
implications lead to Frye’s world of total metaphor—a world in which, at the molecular level, all
is in communication and thus all part of one great body.
One clearly emergent trend in the time of Spiritualism’s height of popularity was the
development of communication technologies. 81
The mythic state of bilocality was exhibited
78 Lockwood, 17.
79 Lockwood, 1.
80 Lockwood, 49.
81 See Peters; Sconce.
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