Puslapio vaizdai
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is towards the rejection of those creatures of the immethodical mind. Sound thinkers begin to see that they are mere idols. Vibrations and vibriatuncles are now taking their place; the new conception emanating from the analogy of sound, the vibrations of which appear to be visible to the eye, as well as potential in the ear. In fine, the physicist is able at last to look at bare facts, without investing them with beggarly shifts. Yet this victory of naked truth is slow as well as sure. The Newtonian mode of stating the fact of gravitation was once abused as mystical, whereas it was precisely the reverse. It was those fluid-mongers who were the mystics then, as they are now. They invent they know not what, in order to escape the dire necessity of confronting pure force face to face. They cannot think that common matter is sufficient for its own energies, and therefore they project a family of matters extraordinary for the purpose. One might well wonder if these ghostloving schoolmen ever inquire whether a series of subter- or super-fluids be not needful for the sustaining of their favorites from the invisible world. Since the calorific fluid must be devised for the sake of expanding solids, liquids, and gases, it is surely the next necessity of the case to devise something else to produce the expansion of caloric! But super-caloric, as this second creation of the calorician's "heat-oppressed brain" would fall to be denominated, must likewise be provided with an expansor, a super-super-caloric; then this double-superfine imponderable were just as needful of an actuator as the origi nal caloric himself; and so on in an interminable series, as appalling as it were fantastical:

What! will the line stretch out to the crack of doom?
Another yet? A seventh ?—I'll hear no more.

Nay, but caloric is self-expansive, the lingering disciple of Doctor Black will urge. Well, is it not just as simple, and far more direct to affirm that the gases are self-expansive in all conditions, while liquids and solids are self-expansive under conditions which are very determinable? The fact is, that solids and liquids are potentially self-expansive bodies, in which the self-expansive tendency is overcome by the contractive energies of nature, gravitation, and cohesion; precisely as a plant or an animal is, chemically speaking, a putrefactive body, in which the tendency to fall down into putridity is overcome by the superior force of vitality. The instant a living substance ceases to be the subject of the upholding power of life,

it succumbs to those inferior forces which melt it down again into the rest of nature. And the moment a solid or a liquid body is relieved from the constraint of cohesion and gravity it expands.

This mode of affirming the influence one cerebro-spinal axis possesses over another should, accordingly, by no means repel those Mesmerists who are watchful of the tendency of science towards a dynamical view of all natural phenomena; although, with the exception of the ultra-psychological section of their own school, they have been hitherto hankering after some mysterious fluid, supposed to pass from the operator to the patient, or from the patient to the operator. The gist of the argument, which is now pressed on the attention of these enthusiastic investigators, is simply to the effect that there not only is no necessity, but that it is also bad methodology, to have recourse to the mystical generation of airs, auræ, winds, afflatus, wareens, animal-magnetic fluids, new imponderables, or other nonentities, in order to bring the phenomena of Mesmerism within the range of intelligibility, that it is to say, within the pale of recognized analogy. As to the rational grounds of the zoöpolar force, of vitality proper, of chemical affinity, of common magnetism, of cohesion, and of gravity, they are beyond the reach of science altogether. In a word, the rational grounds of things lie out of the province of a merely scientific methodology. They belong to the possible domain of philosophy, properly so called: but it is a domain not yet begun to be realized in any direction; and probably not realizable until after the discovery of a new philosophical organon, more potent than the syllogism, the process of induction, or the doctrine of antinomies. In the meantime, the man of science must willingly confine himself to the study of phenomena alone, and beware of perplexing the world with impertinent nothings or ludicrous impossibilities.

Returning to the subject more immediately in hand, the inquisitive reader may demand a secondary explanation; a rationalè, namely, of the too indubitable fact that such entrancings as have just been discussed, are not constantly occurring and interrupting the business of the world. How is it that, when one half the world shakes hands with the other, the less fortunate of the halves is not plunged into this deepest of sleeps? Nay, how is it that the whole splanchnic or sympathetic system of nerves in the former does not likewise fall neuro-negative to that of the latter; and the heart, lungs,

stomach, and other vital organs consequently cease to play their all-important parts in the drama of animal life? How is it, in fact, that one half of us do not strike the other dead, like the basilisk of ancient fable; and the residuary demi-humanity divide itself again and again in fatal fascination, until the last man be prematurely left alone? The question is hardly fair, yet the reply seems to be obvious. It lies in the peculiar characteristic of a nervous-system, as contrasted with any other thing in nature. A nervous-system is reactive upon, or sensitive of the movements of all the rest of creation. So is a sun, so is a planet, so is an atom: the disturbance of the smallest mote disturbs the universe. But a nervous-system is more: it is sensible that it is sensitive of the motions of things. It is sensitive of itself. Were it not so, the query might well arise, Where does the body of a man end, and the rest of nature begin? Are the bones, are the nails, is the cuticle, is the hair the body? Is the whole of nature not the body of the soul? No, because the sensation of his sensations sculptures a man out from the rest of nature: and he walks abroad the paragon of animals, as well as a denizen of the supernatural world. Nor is his (merely animal) individuality left at the sport of polarity. It is protected from that otherwise inexorable law by the myriad of sensations which shower down on the periphery of his cerebro-spinal axis from external nature, as well as by its own innumerable movements of volition and thought; while the respiratory and sympathetic nerves are solicited day and night by the pressure of the blood at the heart, the touch of venous blood at the lungs, and so forth.. The nervous-system is kept awake by the inpouring and out pouring tides of ceaseless sensation. Hence it is, perhaps, that the negative-polarization of the sympathetic and respira tory is impossible, and that of even the axis difficult and infrequent. These are possibly the reasons why the nervous-lymphatic temperament on one hand, and a powerful well-balanced nervous-system on the other; freedom from the digestive process; every thing that is monotonous, in the figurative as well as in the literal sense of the adjective; and the cutting away of as many as possible of the individualizing agencies that act upon the expected subject, are propitious, and even more or less necessary to the production of the phenomenon now criticized. Such, then, is our theory of the trance. It is the conception of the two cerebro-spinal axes, of different degrees of energy, brought into the relation of dual unity; the one

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being conceived of as neuro-positive or solar, the other neuronegative or planetary; the former corresponding with zinc, the latter with copper.

If these observations had not already extended to so great a length, we should have been glad to assail the other theories of the trance that have been laid before the world, and to defend this one with more particularity and detail. Suffice it at present that, if any body were to bring forward the selfinduced hypnotism of Mr. Braid's subjects, nothing is yet known of the distances at which one nervous-system can become negative to another; and that the steady contemplation of a bright or particular point may only concentrate the circumstances favorable to a person's being unconsciously entranced by another in the same room or house. The objector must also remember that every man is possessed of two brains, two spinal chords, two systems of nerves for sensation, and two for voluntary motions, although only one splanchnic or visceral system. Each of us is composed, in fact, of a pair of cerebrospinal axes, and one of them is always a little different from the other. The more alike they are, the more regular the features, and the more insipid the character in general. In the dreamer, the seer, the poet, the philosopher, the man of prowess, there is always a visible inequality between the two brains and nervous-systems, which are thus sheathed in the skin and outer body of what is called a man. The Greek sculptors never pretermit this fact: they knew it probably without reflection; and they expressed it without hesitation. An excessive difference, on the other hand, seems always to be the gnomon of a violent and eccentric nature. Be the meaning of these hints what it may, however, each of us is, speaking physiologically and in sober reality, what one of the clas sical characters in British poetry is said to have been in an ideal sense of the words. Each of us is "two single gentlemen rolled into one"; and we venture to surmise, if not to suspect, that not only the hypnotism of the Manchester patients, but the common blessed sleep of every body else, is in reality connected with this sort of polarity: but from these fascinating subjects we must now refrain.

But what if all the four classes of allegation, which have been dismissed above without very much ceremony, turn out to be true! What if they only await the slow-sure revolution of the scientific year! The simple trance was long disputed, and even scouted, but it is now an indubitable fact! Is it not

at least possible that clearseeing, and all that sort of thing, may also become established on the accumulated experience of the ingenuous? The Hours alone can bring the answer to such eager questionings as these. As soon, however, as the observers shall have done their part of the work, and set the factual department of the subject beyond contention, we are ready to essay our own as critics; for it is our conviction that the theory of polarity is competent to the explanation of all the higher phenomena of Mesmerism, supposing them to be true. It was our original intention, indeed, to have dealt with these phenomena under such a temporary supposition as is indicated at the close of the last sentence. We should have done so, not as a scientific duty, certainly, but as a piece of high and exhilarating scientific sport. It would have been undertaken and executed in the spirit in which the hardestworking men will hasten of an evening, after the substantial and necessary labors of the day, to the cricket-ground or the wrestling-green. In the event of our readers caring enough about the matter, we shall perhaps summon them ere long to be the spectators of such a game. In the meantime, it is necessary and sufficient to point out, with forefinger as firm as iron, the most important consideration, that, whether the phenomena in question ever be made out or not, the circumstance can have no earthly relation with the majority of the wonders of the New Testament: and that for this one overwhelming and conclusive reason;-That the seers, healers, and wonderworkers of the Gospels and the Book of Acts are not the negatives, but the positives in their respective pairs, if they be any thing. It is not the patient that shows forth the marvellous latencies of the nature of man in the most significant of these sacred instances, but the operator; whereas it is the very reverse in the mesmeric couples. This single circumstance, in fact, differentiates those particular cases once for all from the mesmeric phenomena; and announces their belonging to another sphere of the hyper-physical altogether.

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