Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 070.djvu/78

72 Now as to the two natures engaged, operating and operated upon, in Mesmerism, they must be matter and spirit; and here I cannot but note a very wonderful inconsistency in some advocates for mesmerism, who do in conversation and in published works deny that there is any such thing as spirit at all, showing at the same time phenomena that cannot belong to matter, and must belong to spirit. There are no conceivable effluvia, or electric essences, or anything whatever material, however subtle, that can foretell events—that can reveal the secret of the "to come." Prophecy must be a spiritual power; so that the pure materialists at once cut from under them the greater number and the greater of the facts upon which the claims of mesmerism are built.

Here, then, is a spiritual power: it is either Inherent in the nature of man—and if so, he is in progression to be more than man; or it is imparted to him at times, and upon occasions, as with the prophets of the Scriptures. We might well be said to shrink from the former supposition; if we assume the latter, we must do so with an awe and reverence not quite suited to the circumstances of the displays of the various exhibitions we witness. So that, taking the claims at their weakest and apparently least offensive construction, it must be asserted that the somnambulist is an inspired person, and that, in this inspired state, he is at once both in and out of the body—that he can make all his bodily organs dead, inoperative; and that he acquires from a new source all their powers, and these enlarged.

Be it observed, I have not here supposed any cheat, any collusion, or illusion, trick, or conjuration whatever. That is quite out of the question, as I would treat the subject. I have only to specify, to make clear the varied claims—to show what they are—not to deny them, or the facts on which they are built; but, having done thus much, I think It will follow that we cannot reasonably be called upon for so large a measure of faith, without being allowed to scrutinise the facts in every possible way—and even strongly, without offence, to express doubts—and, if it may happen, to suspect imposture.

And I do think that, in the search after so great a truth—if mesmerism be a truth—it is quite out of and below the dignity of the subject to resort to any of those exhibitions which are common with professed conjurors. I would, therefore, urge upon the members of the mesmeric body that they altogether abstain from cards and card-playing; and I would suggest—as it is professed that the somnambulist cannot see—that, instead of giving him sealed letters and books, these things should be in another room; and that there letters should be written, and books opened, of which passages are to be read: for it is quite inconsistent with the claims to suppose that the somnambulist shall be able to see what is, and what is doing, in a room hundreds of miles off, and not be able to tell what is read and what is doing in the next room. I wish to see this science at one with itself—mesmerists at one with themselves. They must not blow hot and cold; and if they put down failures to a weakened mesmeric influence, they must suffer their claim, as to its full influence, to be nailed down—to be an immovable, undeniable fact that they have claimed, and do claim, directly and indirectly, a kind of omniscience and omnipresence hitherto considered impossible in man uninspired, or in one that is man only.

But there is a further startling claim. I have, as yet, considered the powers of mesmerism as operative only in congenial, or rather the same specific natures in man with man.

Its influence over other natures is now asserted. A rampant bull is arrested and fixed in the very moment of his fierce assault. Savage dogs are instantly made to quail. A cow in articuli mortis is cured, which the operator, Miss Martineau, thinks conclusive against the theory of the working upon the imagination. Now, in these brute influences, some of the old assumptions must be either given up or extended: the brute creation must be participators with us in the one case; or that peculiar sympathy, that mind-communion by rapport, must be so modified as, if not to annihilate, greatly to reduce its claim. The human diseases are discovered by the agent,