Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/362

 THE WILL IN NATURE.

the eye steadily upon him, is frequently substituted with complete success for the customary manipulation; precisely because even this outward act is suited to fix the will in a determined direction. But this immediate power which the will can exercise over other persons, is brought to light best of all by the admirable experiments made, even in public, by M. Dupotet and his pupils in Paris, in which a stranger is guided and determined at pleasure by the magnetiser's mere will, aided by a few gestures, and is even forced into the most extraordinary contortions. An apparently quite honestly written pamphlet, entitled First glance into the wonder-world of Magnetism, by Karl Scholl (1853), contains a brief account of this. 1

In the Communications concerning the somnambulist Auguste K. in Dresden (1843), we find the truth in question confirmed in another way by what the somnambulist herself says, p. 53: "I was half asleep and my brother

1 I had the good fortune in the year 1854 myself to witness some extraordinary feats of this kind, performed here by Signor Regazzoni from Bergamo, in which the immediate, i.e. magical, power of his will over other persons was unmistakable, and of which no one, excepting perhaps those to whom Nature has denied all capacity for apprehending pathological conditions, could doubt the genuineness. There are nevertheless such persons: they ought to become lawyers, clergymen, merchants or soldiers, but in heaven's name not doctors; for the result would be homicidal, diagnosis being the principal thing in medicine. Regazzoni was able at will to throw the somnambulist who was under his influence into a state of complete catalepsy, nay, he could make her fall down backwards, when he stood behind her and she was walking before him, by his mere will, without any gestures. He could paralyze her, give her tetanus [stiff muscles or cataleptic trance], with dilated pupils, complete insensibility, and in short, all the unmistakeable symptoms of complete catalepsy. He made one of the lady spectators first play the piano; then standing fifteen paces behind her, he so completely paralyzed her by his will and gestures, that she was unable to continue playing. He next placed her against a column and charmed her to the spot, so that she was unable to move in spite of the strongest efforts. According to my own observation, nearly all his feats are to be explained by his isolating the brain from the spinal marrow, either completely, in which case the sensible and motor nerves become paralyzed, and total catalepsy ensues; or partially, by the paralysis only affecting the motor nerves while sensibility remains, in other words, the head keeps its consciousness, while the body is apparently lifeless. This is precisely the effect of strychnine: it paralyzes the motor nerves only, even to complete tetanus, which induces death by asphyxia; but it leaves the sensible nerves, and with them consciousness, intact. Regazzoni does this same thing by the magic influence of his will. The moment at which this isolation takes place is distinctly visible in a peculiar trembling of the patient. I recommend a small French publication entitled Antoine Regazzoni de Bergame à Francfort sur Main, by L. A. V. Dubourg (Frankfurt, November 1854, 31 pages in 8vo.) on Regazzoni's feats and the unmistakably genuine character they bear for everyone who is not entirely devoid of all sense for organic Nature.

In the Journal du Magnétisme, edit. Dupotet, of the 15th August, 1856, in criticizing a treatise: De la Catalepsie, mémoire couronné, 1856, in 4to, the reviewer, Morin, says: "La plupart des caractères, qui distinguent la catalepsie, peuvent être obtenus artificiellement et sans danger sur les sujets magnétiques, et c'est même là un des exercices les plus ordinaires des séances magnétiques." [Most of the characteristics that constitute catalepsy can be obtained artificially and without danger in magnetized subjects; and this is even one of the most usual exercises in magnetic séances.] [Add. to 3rd ed,}

ANIMAL