Volume 57 — MESMERISM. (continued 2)

"Mr Townshend at last determined to demesmerise me. He began to make elliptical movements with his hands, the reverse of those which he had made at the commencement; I could now open my eyes without any kind of effort, my whole muscular system became perfectly obedient to my will; I was able to get up, and was perfectly awake; but I remained nearly an hour in a kind of stupefaction very similar to that which sometimes attacks me in the mornings, if I rise two or three hours later than usual."—(P. 388 to 390.)

Similar, as to the general conclusions, are the reports of the French Academy and the testimonies of all rigorous and well-conducted scientific examination. These testimonies apply to facts which it is the duty of those experimentalists and physiologists, who have time and opportunity at their disposal, fairly to investigate.

The insensibility to pain, and to the effects of the galvanic shock, are also within the limits of the credible—and the latter is the more easy of proof, as being incapable of simulation. As we stated at the commencement, so we repeat here; mesmerism has been too little investigated by competent persons, and is too much mystified by charlatanism, to enable us accurately to define the limits of the true and false, far less to predict what may be the discoveries to which it may lead. With regard to the facts of clairvoyance, we are at present entirely incredulous. Mr Townshend says, p. 91—

"Let, then, body after body of learned men deny the phenomena of mesmerism, and logically disprove their existence; an appeal may ever, and at any moment, be made to the proof by experiment; and even should experiment itself fail a thousand times, the success of the thousandth and first trial would justify further examination. Till the authority of observation can be wholly set aside, the subject of our enquiry can never be said to have undergone its final ostracism."

This is certainly a strong proposition; nevertheless it is with the hope that observation may be directed to the facts of mesmerism, that we have written the preceding pages. In reasoning on a subject, we can use only those lights which experience has given us. The efficacy of logical disproof, somewhat contemptuously treated by Mr Townshend in the above passage, is yet fully vindicated by the latter half of the book itself, which is an endeavour, logically, to bring home mesmerism to the understanding of men of experience. It is vain to make light of logic, when the parties who set it at nought are themselves obliged to use it to prove its own worthlessness. You must not exalt reason, and we will give you the reason why—this cuts their own ground from under them. We so far agree with the last quoted sentence, as to admit that, when experiments fairly tried by competent parties have and do succeed, mesmerism will be established—hitherto they have not succeeded. The alleged proofs are not brought home to the observation of cautious, thinking men; and reason, thus at once derided and appealed to, is unsatisfied. Time "may bring in its revenges," may show things which would be to us marvellous; and we deny no future possibilities. At present, we admit some very curious phenomena, which we would willingly see further examined; but we are unconvinced of those facts of mesmerism enounced by its professors, which wholly contradict our previous experience. Upon what we consider the only safe grounds for the general admission of newly asserted facts, the evidence in support of these should more than counterpoise the evidence for their rejection. Up to the present time, balancing, as we have endeavoured to do, impartially, the evidence in favour of clairvoyance, and the preternatural powers of mesmerism, against those of an opposite tendency, the former seems to us inordinately outweighed. On the other hand, the production, by external influence, either of absolute coma or of sleep-waking, whether resulting from imagination in the patient, or from an effort of the will on the part of the mesmeriser, or from both conjointly, has been too lightly estimated and too little examined. This alone is in itself an effect so novel, so mysterious, and apparently so connected with the mainsprings of sentient existence, as to deserve and demand a rigorous, impartial, and persevering scrutiny.

Since this article was written, the letters of Miss Martineau have appeared. Had these been published earlier, we should undoubtedly have noticed them at some length; they have not, however, induced us to alter any thing we have written; they have, indeed, confirmed one remark made above. The effects described by Miss Martineau as produced upon herself, are credible and not preternatural, while the second-sight of the girl J—— is preternatural and not credible; i. e. not credible as preternatural, otherwise easily explicable.

In this, as in every mesmeric case, the marvellous effects are developed by the uneducated—the most easily deceived, and the most ready to be deceivers.

The clairvoyant writers have greatly the advantage of the sceptics in one respect, viz. the public interest of their communications. Every one reads the description of new marvels, few care to examine the arguments in contravention of them.

"Pol, me occidistis, amici, Non servastis, ait, cui sic extorta voluptas, Et demptus per vim mentis gratissimus error."