Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 12.djvu/766

746 made by those eminent scientists, Mr. William Crookes and Mr. A. R. Wallace. We supposed, from intimations in this last and shorter installment, that the discussion was ended; but Mr. Wallace comes on again in the last Athenæum, and, as the logomachy may prove interminable, we, at all events, shall have to stop. Nothing would be gained by printing Mr. Wallace's last letter in full, but some notice of his positions may be desirable.

The relation of official French inquiry into mesmerism, animal magnetism, and clairvoyance, has been a prominent question in this controversy. The main facts seem to be these: In 1784 the French Government ordered the medical faculty of Paris to investigate the theories of Mesmer, who had been making a great stir in that city, and report upon them. A committee was appointed, of which Franklin and Lavoisier were members, and their report was adverse to the validity of Mesmer's claims. In 1825 the believers in animal magnetism applied for a new commission, which was appointed by the Academy of Sciences, and consisted of five members, who made a favorable report upon the subject in 1831; but this report was neither adopted by the Academy nor regularly printed in its memoirs. In 1837 the French Academy appointed a new commission of nine members, who reported adversely upon the doctrine of animal magnetism, and their report was adopted by the Academy; and still another commission was afterward ordered by the same body, and with the same result. Mr. Wallace complains that Dr. Carpenter, in his historical sketch of the subject, ignored the report of 1831, which was on the side of mesmerism, and was not accepted by the French Academy, and he devotes his last letter to a statement of the points made in that report. Mr. Wallace assures us that the commission "obtained absolutely conclusive facts, which have subsequently been often confirmed, but have never been satisfactorily explained away." Among these is the proof of clairvoyance. The committee say that "prevision of organic phenomena, knowledge of the internal conditions of other persons, and true clairvoyance, had been demonstrated to them." Mr. Wallace adds: "One of the somnambulists determined correctly the symptoms of M. Marc, a commissioner; and also the disease of another person, the accuracy of the diagnosis being confirmed by postmortem examination. Clairvoyance was proved by one of the patients repeatedly reading and naming cards while four of the commissioners successively held his eyes closed with their fingers—a test, the absolute conclusiveness of which each one may satisfy himself of."

The term clairvoyance means literally clear sight. But everybody with good eyes has clear sight; the alleged vision is, therefore, not of the ordinary kind. It claims to be an extraordinary kind of seeing, a seeing through opaque objects—through the eyelids, through bandages, or through the back of the head, and into objects not penetrable by ordinary vision. The term "clear," as applied to this kind of sight, is intended to denote especial or remarkable clearness, or a transcendental vision, which opens to sight things not sensible to the normal eye. In short, clairvoyance affirms an extra endowment for making things visible which goes beyond the range of that sense which is our usual source of knowledge.

Now, Mr. Wallace says that this is an "absolute fact," which has been conclusively proved and known for forty-seven years, or since the report of 1831, that declared it to be demonstrated. As, therefore, this remarkable endowment of human nature has been established as a fact for nearly half a century, we are fairly entitled to ask, What have been its results? If it be true, no discovery ever made in science can for a moment bear comparison with it in importance; and if it be true, we have a