be seen.

through the contents' of a new book. He pointed to the phrenological organs of my head, and named them in due order; and he told the time by passing his finger over a watch without touching it. A number of small objects from different persons in the room were placed together before him, and he gave each person that which belonged to him, his eyes all the while being apparently quite closed. I took care, however, that throughout these experiments everything to be tested should be first so brought, as if accidentally, before his eyes, that if they were in use each object might easily I now varied my plan, but said nothing. I held my watch so that it might be plainly seen by him, and then placing one hand over his eyes, passed the watch with its face to his forehead, having first adroitly moved the hands of the watch without being observed. He instantly named the time, not as now indicated, but as it was before the hands were moved! I went on with my plan, letting single words or numbers stand an instant before his eyes, and then substituting others in testing his brow-sight, only saying 'Wonderful!' as I got the ready reply. It was indeed very wonderful : the friends around were all surprisingly satisfied, but so was not I. The answers were all right, and yet all wrong; right so far that he always correctly named what he had or might have seen, and wrong in all other instances. Did our friend endeavour to deceive us? No, far otherwise; but his brain was in such a strange condition that he fully believed he was seeing with his forehead and his fingers, while in fact he was only using his eyes with his eyelids nearly closed. For the time he laboured under a peculiar insanity, and, with a common infatuation, was anxious to impress others with his own delusion. I can testify, by way of warning to mesmerists, that whatever be their mode of fixing the attention while thus exciting and tiring the

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nerves, there is a great tendency to convulsive disease and mental derangement, as the result of their unnatural tricks with the brain and senses.

Mesmeric sleep-walking presents the following phenomena. 1. Increase of the heart's action without corresponding increase of breathing. 2. Diminution of sensibility to pain. 3. On awaking a clear memory of the facts known in the natural state but obliviousness of the events of the mesmeric state. 4. The retention of locomotion, and so great a readiness to be led into suggested dreams that the mesmeric state may be described as that of many successive hallucinations, the will taking direction according to suggestions in any way conveyed to the mesmerised person. A frequent production of this state of hallucination must therefore be very likely to favour the development of an insane habit of brain.

Assuming all that is related of phreno-magnetism, neurypnology, hypnotism, and electro-biology, or whatever we please to call it, to be true, it proves that there are marvels belonging to the manifestations of the soul which human doctrines cannot explain. It shows us also, that if one human being voluntarily yields his body to the manipulations and impressions of another, it pretty frequently follows that, through the medium of bodily susceptibilities, the will of the latter obtains irresistible power over the former, who is led captive in all his faculties to do any sin that may be dictated. Through the body all evil enters. Surely here we have a sufficiently important lesson to teach us the necessity of keeping the body under our own control, if we wish to preserve our proper dignity as free agents, who acknowledge no master but Him who has the right of commanding, because He has made us for Himself.

We need not attribute the mesmeric miracles to satanic agency; the human spirit answers the purpose; and the fluid of which mesmerists so fluently talk is

only a very improbable hypothesis to explain the mysteries of mental action. Here is the apparently valid objection which cautious medical practitioners feel to the employment of mesmerism as a remedial power. They justly enquire, what is the agent? Can we manage it? No; it is too irregular, too uncertain, too open to imposition and mistake, to supersede those medicinal agents, the properties and effects of which on the organism of disease are sufficiently well known. Shall we trust to the influences of imagination, or what not, with all its inscrutable vagaries, rather than judge according to the effects of what experience has taught us to appreciate? It is evident that mental influences are by mesmerism excited in a manner which in no case can be calculated on, for no two individuals are affected by it exactly in the same manner. Its effects are more morbid and less manageable than we ever witness with regard to therapeutic agents; and therefore, although it may occasionally cure certain maladies by inducing an unusual condition of the nervous system, yet physicians may be reasonably excused if they decline to admit a vis imaginaria into their materia medica. The mind of the patient, indeed, may and ought to be directed to the superintending Will and Power in the use of both physical and spiritual remedies for physical and spiritual disorders; and we often find the physician's skilful efforts seconded, sustained, and blessed by a better peace than that of ecstatic delirium or sleepy acquiescence.

A man who is not tired out of self-command, or has not given himself up, cannot be quite mesmerised; and he who has positive moral faith, cannot be persuaded even in sleep or delirium to believe anything contrary to that faith: but a man without faith has never made up his mind, and will seem to believe anything, for he lives only in his senses, and is moved by whatever

outwardly affects him. Thus in the mesmeric and hypnotic states, the soul's will is lost in a purposeless submission; so that the operator can at his pleasure suggest any idea, or excite any emotion, provided it be in keeping with the patient's previous life and knowledge. This state is then so far the effect of a beguiled imagination, and not of faith, for faith is the soul's willing activity with intelligent reliance and good

reason.

If, indeed, phreno-mesmerists can, by pointing to the appropriate organs, cause a man to become pious and conscientious, or just what they please, as they tell us they can, then indubitably they ought to be in full. demand, and full pay, at our penitentiaries and prisons, to expedite the restoration of criminals to society by cultivating their brains, until duly developed after the best fashion of Gall and Spurzheim, instead of allowing the poor involuntary outcasts to be hanged or transported. We have not heard of conversions by such means; but the divine method of employing the body in useful labour, and the mind with natural and revealed truth, never fails to effect all that can be done in this world to restore our fallen nature. There can be no use in mesmeric trances and other forms of perverted mental manifestation, except to demonstrate what disordered actions of brain can accomplish. Mesmerism, like the pseudo-miracles of spirit-rapping and table-turning, must, with the right use of the understanding, go out of fashion; for they came in with the delusive longings of an inspired ignorance, that would see beyond the sight either of reason or of sense.

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CHAPTER V.

THE FACULTY OF ABSTRACTION.

THE preceding facts, being viewed in connection, clearly prove that the mind is constituted to be in action when impressed, and that it does not grow out of sensations, but is qualified to avail itself of their help in the acquisition of truth, in respect alike to our physical and moral nature. In proportion as we become acquainted with moral relations, we become conscious of responsibility, and then our individuality takes its highest standing. We thus perceive that on the direction of our voluntary energies mostly depends either our weal or our woe; because we possess the faculty of willing according to our knowledge, and of fixing our attention on objects according to the end we would attain. Let us not, however, like Milton's fallen angels, sit amidst the clouds of darkness to discuss fore-knowledge and free-will-subjects which only holy beings are likely to understand— but let us turn to our common experience of that condition of the thinking principle in which we abstract our attention from surrounding objects, in order to fix it upon ideas.

The same being that employs a certain set of muscles for the accomplishment of its purposes, also exercises a control over his faculties, and to a great extent, as long as the functions of the body allow, directs their operations according to will. Probably, in a perfect state, as regards physical accommodation, there would be no other limit to the exercise of this commanding power over the mental faculties than the necessary law of their constitution as