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MESMERISM, SPIRITUALISM 
 
MESMERISM, SPIRITUALISM, &c. 
 
 HISTORICALLY &- SCIENTIFICALLY CONSIDERED 
 
 BEING TWO LECTURES 
 DELIVERED AT THE LONDON INSTITUTION 
 
 W\i\ |lafatc anb gppcnbk 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM B. CARPENTER, C.B. 
 
 M.D. LL.D. F.R.S. F.G.S. V.P.L.S. 
 
 CORRESPOND.N-G MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE 
 
 REGISTRAR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON 
 
 ETC. 
 
 A^EW YORK: 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 
 
 549 AND 551 BROADWAY. 
 
 1877. 
 
GIFT 
 
(?>F /oil 
 
 EDUC. 
 
 PSYCH. 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 The recent direction of the public mind to the claims 
 of what is called ' Spiritualism/ partly by the discus- 
 sion which took place in the Anthropological Section 
 of the British Association at its Meeting in Glasgow, 
 and partly by the Slade prosecution which followed, 
 having led the Directors of the London Institution to 
 invite me to deliver two Lectures on the subject, I con- 
 sented to do so on the understanding that I should 
 treat it purely in its Historical and Scientific aspects : 
 my purpose being to show, first, the relation of what 
 seems to me essentially an Epidemic Delusion, to Epi- 
 demics, more or less similar, which have at different 
 periods taken a strong — though transient — hold on 
 the popular imagination ; and secondly, to point out 
 how completely the evidence adduced by the upholders 
 of the system fails to afford a scientific proof of the 
 existence of any new Power or Agency capable of an- 
 tagonising the action of the known Forces of Nature. 
 
 035 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 In consequence of many representations made to 
 me that these Lectures might be advantageously 
 brought under the notice of- a wider circle than that of 
 their original auditors, I was led to prepare them for 
 publication in Erasers Magazine y\^A\h. the addition of 
 passages which want of time prevented me from in- 
 cluding in their oral delivery. And in now repro- 
 ducing them in a separate form, with an Appendix 
 of pieces jiistificatives, I have no other m^otive than a 
 desire to do what I can to save from this new form 
 of Epidemic Delusion some who are in danger of 
 being smitten by its poison, and to afford to such as 
 desire to keep themselves clear from it, a justification 
 for their ' common sense ' rejection of testimony 
 pressed upon them by friends whose honesty they 
 would not for a moment call in question. Among 
 these pieces, there are none which seem to me of more 
 value than the extracts I have given from the writ- 
 ings (long out of print) of the late Mr. Braid ; whose 
 experiments, which I repeatedly witnessed, not only 
 contributed essentially to the elucidation of what is 
 real in the phenomena of Mesmerism and the states 
 allied to it, but furnished (by anticipation) the clue to 
 the explanation of many of the curious psychical 
 phenomena of honest Spiritualism. 
 
 In the discussion to which I have just referred, 
 Mr. A. R. Wallace, speaking from the Chair of the 
 Anthropological Section, addressed me in the follow- 
 
PREFACE. vii 
 
 Ing words : — * You expect us to believe what you say, 
 * but you will not believe what we say.* And the 
 same distinguished Naturalist has since publicly ac- 
 cused me of ' habitually giving only one side of the 
 'question, and completely ignoring all facts which tell 
 ' against [my] theory.' — The reader of these Lectures 
 will see that my whole aim is to discover, on the 
 generally accepted principles of Testimony, what arc 
 facts ; and to discriminate between facts and the in- 
 ferences drawn from them. I have no other ' theory ' 
 to support, than that of the constancy of the well- 
 ascertained Laws of Nature ; and my contention is, 
 that where apparent departures from them take place 
 through Human instrumentality, we are justified* in 
 assuming in the first instance either fraudulent de- 
 ception, or unintentional j'r//*-deception, or both com- 
 bined, — until the absence of either shall have been 
 proved by every conceivable test that the sagacity of 
 sceptical experts can devise. 
 
 The two different modes in which Spiritualists and 
 their opponents view the same facts, according to their 
 respective predispositions, is well brought out in cases 
 of the so-called ' materialization.' — A party being 
 assembled in a front drawing-room, the * medium ' re- 
 tires into a back room separated from it by curtains, 
 and professes there to go into a trance. After a short 
 interval, during which the lights are turned down so 
 as to make * darkness visible,' a figure dressed in some 
 strange guise enters between the curtains, and (lis- 
 
viii PREFACE. 
 
 plays itself to the spectators as an * embodied spirit.' 
 Precluded from any direct interference with the per- 
 formance, a sceptic among the company slyly puts 
 some ink on his fingers, and, whilst this is still wet, 
 grasps the 'spirit-hand,' which he finds very like a 
 mortal one. The ' spirit ' withdraws behind the cur- 
 tains, after a short interval the lights are raised, 
 and the ' medium ' returns to the company in propria 
 persona. The sceptic then points out inkstains on 
 one of the ' medium's ' hands, and tells what he has 
 done. 
 
 These are the fads of the case. — Now, the ' com- 
 mon-sense ' interpretation of these facts is, that the 
 ' nredium ' is a cheat, and the * embodied spirit ' a vul- 
 gar ghost personated by him; and until adequate 
 proof shall have been given to the contrary, I main- 
 tain that we are perfectly justified in holding to this 
 interpretation, confirmed as it is by the exposure of 
 the trick in every instance in which adequate means 
 have been taken for its detection. 
 
 But the explanation of his inked fingers given by 
 the ' medium ' is, that the impress made on the hand 
 of the 'embodied spirit' has been transferred 'ac- 
 cording to a well-known law of Spiritualism ' to his 
 own ; and this assumption is regarded as more pro- 
 bable, by such as have accepted the system, than 
 that their pet 'medium' is a cheat, and their belief 
 in him a delusion ! 
 
 That such an assumption should not only gain 
 
PREFACE. ix 
 
 the acceptance of minds otherwise rational, but should 
 be stoutly upheld by them with unquestioning faith, 
 seems to me a striking exemplification of the strength 
 of the hold which a 'dominant idea' may gain, when 
 once the protective safeguard of 'common sense' has 
 been weakly abandoned. And I would further de- 
 duce from it the educational importance of that early 
 Scientific training, of which a disciplined and trust- 
 worthy judgment on such subjects is one of the most 
 valuable resultants. For that training — which essen- 
 tially consists in the formation of habits of accurate 
 observation, and of correct reasoning upon the facts 
 so learned — pervades the ivhole mind, and shapes its 
 general forms of thought in a degree which is rarely (if 
 ever) equalled by the direction of its powers at a later 
 period of life to the culture of some limited field of 
 scientific investigation. Any such specialization leaves 
 the wide domain of thought which lies outside, un- 
 touched by scientific influences ; and thus it happens 
 that men who achieve high distinction in particular 
 lines of scientific enquiry, may not only have no 
 special competence for the pursuit of an enquiry of a 
 totally different kind, but may be absolutely dis^ 
 qualified, by preformed tendencies, for its thorough 
 and impartial prosecution. A remarkable case of this 
 kind, incidentally noticed in the following pages (pp. 
 7 and 69), I have elsewhere more fully discussed.* 
 
 ' 'The Radiometer and its Lessons,' in the N"uictcenth Century for 
 March 1877. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 Introduction— 
 
 Epidemic Delusions generally • • 
 
 Mesmerism— 
 
 Mesmer's own System . . 
 
 Report of the French Academic Commission 
 
 Mesmeric Somnambulism 
 
 Mr. Braid's Hypnotism 
 
 Miss Martineau's J 
 
 Supposed Agency of ' Silent Will ' 
 Influence of Expectancy 
 
 9 
 
 II 
 
 13 
 
 16 
 20 
 22 
 25 
 
 Odylism— 
 
 Von Reichenbach's Doctrine 
 
 Explanation of Odylic Phenomena afforded by ]\Ir. 
 Braid's Experiments 
 
 Electro-Biology— 
 
 Phenomena of this state all referrible to Dominant 
 
 Ideas 
 
 Their relation to Spiritualistic Phenometia 
 
 29 
 
 33 
 
 35 
 40 
 
xii CONTENTS. 
 
 Pendule Explorateur— 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ChevreuVs Investigations 4i 
 
 Supposed Odylic Agency disproved ... 43 
 Rutter's Odometer 44 
 
 Divining Rod— 
 
 Supposed Discovery of Water-springs and Metallic 
 
 veins 
 
 Experiments of MM. Chevreul and Biot 
 Dr. Beard's Test Experiment . 
 Mr. Dilke's Test Experiment 
 Various Applications of Rhabdomancy 
 
 47 
 48 
 
 49 
 50 
 51 
 
 THOUGHT-READING — 
 
 Expression by Unconscious Muscular Action . . 53 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 Introduction— 
 
 Credibility of Testimony . ... . . .56 
 
 Common-sense Test 5^ 
 
 Witch-persecutions 61 
 
 Credibility of Scientific Testimony .... 66 
 
 Snail Telegraph 68 
 
 Mr. Crookes's Radiometer 69 
 
 MESMERIC Clairvoyance— 
 
 Investigation by French Academy of Medicine . 71 
 
 Dr. Forbes's Examination of Alexis and Adolphe . 77 
 
 Mr. Braid's Examination of Mdlle. Bernard . . 81 
 
 Dr. Forbes's Detection of George Goble ... 85 
 
 Detection of Mr. H ewes' * Jack ' at Manchester . 2>7 
 
 Untrustworthiness of Professor Gregory's Testimony. 90 
 
 Mental Travelling 93 
 
 Dr. Forbes's Exposure of Miss Martineau's J . 95 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Table-Turning and Table-Talking— 
 
 I'AGR 
 
 Nature of the Movements 97 
 
 Their Source, proved by Faraday's * Indicator' . . 98 
 
 Spiritualism — 
 
 Outbreak of the Epidemic . 
 Explanation of the Rappings 
 Mrs. Hayden in England . 
 Higher Phenomena of Spiritualism 
 Frauds of Professional Mediums 
 Tricks of Non-professionals 
 Self-Deception .... 
 Fallacies of Memory . 
 Influence of Expectancy 
 Trustworthiness of Common Sense 
 Possession bv Dominant Ideas . 
 
 101 
 102 
 103 
 
 IDS 
 
 108 
 109 
 1 10 
 II i 
 
 113 
 
 APPENDICES. 
 
 A. Magic and Demoniacal Agency at the Christian Era . 117 
 
 B. Flagellant Mania 119 
 
 C. Dancing Mania 122 
 
 D. Animal Magnetism of Mesmer . , . . . 1 2.|, 
 
 E. Academic Report on Mesmer's Pretensions . .1-5 
 
 E. Extraordinary Muscular Energy producible by Mental 
 
 Concentration 128 
 
 G, Examination of Mr. Lewis's Pretensions at Aber- 
 deen. 129 
 
xiv CONTENTS. 
 
 H. Mr. Braid's Disproof of Supposed Influence of 
 
 Magnets on Mesmerised Subjects . . .131 
 
 /. Mr. Braid's Experiments on Subjective Sensations 134 
 
 A'. Ancient Use of the Pendule Explorateur . . .139 
 
 L. Table-talking and Planchette- writing . . . .139 
 Reproduction of Unremembered Ideas . . .143 
 
 M, Supposed Diabolic Manifestations . . . .145 
 
 N. Mrs. Norman Culver's Affidavit respecting the Sisters 
 
 Fox 130 
 
 O. Mr. A. R. Wallace's defence of Mrs. Hayden . .153 
 
 P. Mr. Foster's Performances tested . . . .154 
 
 Q. Mr. Braid on the Influence of Suggestion and Ex- 
 pectancy 137 
 
MESMERISM, SPIRITUALISM, &c/ 
 
 LECTURE L 
 
 The aphorism that 'History repeats Itself Is in no 
 case more true than in regard to the subject on which 
 I am now to address you. For there has been a con- 
 tinuity from the very earhest times of a behef, more 
 or less general, in the existence of ' occult ' agencies 
 capable of manifesting themselves in the production 
 of mysterious phenomena of which ordinary expe- 
 rience docs not furnish the rationale. And while 
 this very continuity is maintained by some to be an 
 evidence of the real existence of such agencies, it will 
 be my purpose to show you that it proves nothing 
 more than the wide-spread diffusion, alike among 
 minds of the highest and of the lowest culture, of 
 certain tendencies to thought, which have either 
 created ideal marvels possessing no foundation what- 
 
 » The Lecturcfi, as here presented, include several passages which 
 were necessarily omitted in delivery. 
 
2 MESMERISM, ODVLISM, 
 
 ever in fact, or have, by exaggeration and distortion, 
 invested with a preternatural character occurrences 
 which are perfectly capable of a natural explanation. 
 Thus, to go no further back than the first century of 
 the Christian era, we find the most wonderful narra- 
 tions, alike in the writings of Pagan and of Christian 
 historians, of the doings of the Eastern 'sorcerers' 
 and Jewish 'exorcists' who had spread themselves 
 over the Roman Empire.^ Among these, the Simon 
 Magus slightly mentioned in the Book of Acts was 
 one of the most conspicuous ; being recorded to have 
 gained so great a repute for his ' magic arts,' as to 
 have been summoned to Rome by Nero to exhibit 
 them before him ; and a Christian Father goes on to 
 tell how, when Simon was borne aloft through the 
 air in a winged chariot, in the sight of the Emperor, 
 the united prayers of the Apostles Peter and Paul, 
 prevailing over the demoniacal agencies that sustained 
 him, brought him precipitately to the ground. So, in 
 our own day, not only are we seriously assured by a 
 nobleman of high scientific attainments, that he him- 
 self saw Mr. Home saihng in the air (by moonlight) 
 out of one window and in at another, at a height of 
 seventy feet from the ground ; but eleven persons 
 unite in declaring that Mrs. Guppy was not only 
 conveyed through the air in a trance all the way from 
 Highbury Park to Lamb's Conduit Street, but was 
 brought by invisible agency into a room of which the 
 doors and windows were closed and fastened, coming 
 ' plump down ' in a state of complete unconsciousness 
 
 ' Ajfciuiix A. 
 
TABLE-TURNING, SPIRTTUALISM. 3 
 
 and partial deshabille upon a table round which they 
 were sitting in the dark, shoulder to shoulder. 
 
 Of course, if you accept the testimony of these 
 witnesses to the aerial flights of Mr. Home and Mrs. 
 Gupp}^, you can hav^e no reason whatever for refusing 
 credit to the historic evidence of the demoniacal ele- 
 vation of Simon Magus, and the victory obtained 
 over his demons by the two Apostles. And you are 
 still more bound to accept the solemnly attested 
 proofs recorded in the proceedings of our Law Courts 
 within the last two hundred years, of the aerial trans- 
 port of witches to attend their demoniacal festivities : 
 the belief in Witchcraft being then accepted not only 
 by the ignorant vulgar, but by some of the wisest 
 men of the time, such as Lord Bacon and Sir Matthew 
 Hale, Bishop Jewell and Richard Baxter, Sir Thomas 
 Browne and Addison ; while the denial of it was con- 
 sidered as virtual Atheism. 
 
 The general progress of Rationalism, however, as 
 Mr. Lecky has well shown, has changed all this ; and 
 to accept any of these marvels, we must place our- 
 selves in the mental attitude of the narrator of Mrs. 
 Guppy's flight ; who glories in being so completely 
 unfettered by scientific prejudices, as to be free to 
 swallow anything, however preposterous and impos- 
 sible in the estimation of scientific men, that his 
 belief in ' spiritual ' agencies may lead him to expect 
 as probable. 
 
 If time permitted, it would be my endeavour to 
 show you by a historical examination of these marvels, 
 that there has been a long succession of epidemic 
 
4 MESMERISM, ODVLISM, 
 
 Delusions, the form of which has changed from time 
 to time, whilst their essential nature has remained the 
 same throughout ; and that the condition which 
 underlies them all is the subjection of the mind to a 
 dominant idea. There is a constitutional tendency in 
 many minds to be seized by some strange notion 
 which takes entire possession of them ; so that all the 
 actions of the individual thus ' possessed ' are results 
 of its .operation. This notion may be of a nature 
 purely intellectual, or it may be one that strongly 
 interests the feelings. It may be confined to a small 
 group of individuals, or it may spread through vast 
 multitudes. Such delusions are most tyrannous and 
 most liable to spread, when connected with religious 
 enthusiasm ; as we see in the flagellant and dancing 
 manias of the Middle Ages ; ^ the supposed Demon- 
 iacal possession that afterwards became common .in 
 the nunneries of France and Germany ; the ecstatic 
 revelations of Catholic and Protestant visionaries ; 
 the strange performances of the Convidsionnaircs of 
 St. Medard, which have been since almost paralleled at 
 Methodist * revivals ' and camp-meetings ; the preach- 
 ing epidemic of Lutheran Sweden ; and many other 
 outbreaks of a nature more or less similar. But it is 
 characteristic of some of the later forms of these epi- 
 demic delusions, that they have connected themselves 
 rather with Science than with Religion. In fact, just 
 as the performances of Eastern Magi took the strong- 
 est hold of the Roman mind, when its faith in its old 
 religious beliefs was shaken to its foundations, so did 
 
 ' Af^pcndiccs, B, C. 
 
TABLE-TURNING, SPIRITUALISM. 5 
 
 the grandiose pretensions of Mcsmcr, — who claimed 
 the discovery of a new Force in Nature, as universal 
 as Gravitation, and more mysterious in its effects than 
 Electricity and Magnetism, — find the most ready 
 welcome among the sceptical votaries of novelty who 
 paved the way for the French Revolution. And this 
 pseudo-scientific idea gave the general direction to 
 the doctrines taught by Mesmer's successors ; until in 
 the supposed ' Spiritualistic * manifestations a recur- 
 rence to the religious form has taken place, which may 
 (I think) be mainly traced to the emotional longing 
 for some assurance of the continued existence of de- 
 parted friends, and hence of our own future existence, 
 which the intellectual loosening of time-honoured 
 beliefs as to the Immortality of the Soul has brought 
 into doubt with many. 
 
 I must limit myself, however, to the later phase of 
 this history ; and shall endeavour to show you how 
 completely the extravagant pretensions of Mesmerism 
 and Odylism have been disproved by scientific inves- 
 tigation: all that is genuine in their phenomena 
 having been accounted for by well-ascertained 
 Physiological principles ; while the evidence of their 
 higher marvels has invariably broken down, when 
 submitted to the searching tests imposed by the 
 trained ' experts ' whom I maintain to be alone 
 qualified to pronounce judgment upon such matters. 
 
 Nothing is more common than to hear it asserted 
 that these are subjects which any person of ordinary 
 intelligence can investigate for himself. But the 
 Chemist and the Physicist would most assuredly 
 
6 MESMERISM, ODYLISM, 
 
 demur to any such assumption In regard to a chemical 
 or physical enquiry ; the Physiologist and Geologist 
 would make the same protest against the judgment 
 of unskilled persons in questions of physiology and 
 geology. And a study of Mesmerism, Odylism, and 
 Spiritualism extending over more than forty years, 
 may be thought to justify me in contending that a 
 knowledge of the physiology and pathology of the 
 Human Organism — corporeal and mental — of the 
 strange phenomena which are due to the Physical 
 excitability of the Nervous System, of the yet stranger 
 results, the possession of the Mind by dominant 
 emotions or ideas, of its extraordinary tendency to 
 self-deception in regard to matters in which the feel- 
 ings are interested, of its liability to place undue con- 
 fidence in persons having an interest in deceiving, and 
 of the modes in which fallacies are best to be detected 
 and frauds exposed, is an indispensable qualification 
 both for the discrimination of the genuine from the 
 false, and for the reduction of the genuine to its true 
 shape and proportions. 
 
 I hold, further, not only that it is quite legitimate 
 foi the enquirer to enter upon this study with that 
 * prepossession ' in favour of the ascertained and uni- 
 versally admitted Laws of Nature, which believers in 
 Spiritualism make it a reproach against men of science 
 that they entertain ; but that experience proves that 
 a prepossession in favour of some * occult ' agency Is 
 almost sure to lead the investigator to the too ready 
 acceptance of evidence of Its operation I would be 
 among the last to affirm that there Is not ' much more 
 
TABLE-TURNING, SPIRITUALISM. 7 
 
 in heaven and earth than is drcanrit of in our philo- 
 sophy ; ' and would be as ready as anyone to welcome 
 any addition to our real knowledge of the great 
 Agencies of Nature. But my contention is that no 
 new principle of action has any claim to scientific 
 acceptance, save after an exhaustive enquiry as to the 
 extent to which the phenomena can be accounted for, 
 either certainly or probably, by agencies already 
 known ; an enquiry which only ' experts ' in those 
 departments of science which deal with such agencies 
 are competent to carry out. The assumption of a 
 new agency, and the interpretation of phenomena in 
 accordance with it, is a method which has proved so de- 
 ceptive as to be now universally abandoned by men 
 of truly philosophical habits of thought ; being only 
 practised by such as surrender their common sense to 
 a ' dominant idea,' and deem nothing incredible which 
 accords with their ' prepossession.' 
 
 The recent history of Mr. Crooke's most admirable 
 invention, the Radiometer, is pregnant with lessons 
 on this point. When this was first exhibited to the 
 admiring gaze of the large body of scientific men as- 
 sembled at the soiree of the Royal Society, there was 
 probably no one who was not ready to believe with 
 its inventor that the driving round of its vanes was 
 effected by the direct mechanical agency of that mode 
 of Radiant Force which we call Light ; and the 
 eminent Physicists in whose judgment the greatest 
 confidence was placed, seemed to have no doubt that 
 this mechanical agency was something outside Optics 
 properly so called, and was, in fact, if not a new Force 
 
8 MESMERISM, ODYLISM, 
 
 in Nature, a new modus operandi of a Force previously 
 known under another form. There was here, then, a 
 perfect readiness to admit a novelty which seemed so 
 unmistakably demonstrated, though transcending all 
 previous experience. But after some little time the 
 question was raised whether the effect was not really 
 due to an intermediate action of that mode of Radiant 
 force which we call Heaty upon the attenuated vapour 
 of which it was impossible entirely to get rid ; and the 
 result of a most careful and elaborate experimental 
 enquiry, in which nature has been put to the question 
 in every conceivable mode, has been to make it (I 
 believe) almost if not quite certain that the first view 
 was incorrect, and that Heat is the real moving power, 
 acting under peculiar conditions, but in no new mode. 
 No examination of the phenomena of Spiritualism 
 can give the least satisfaction to the mind trained in 
 philosophical habits of thought, unless it shall have 
 been, in its way, as searching and complete as this. 
 And when scientific men are invited to dark seances^ 
 or are admitted only under the condition that they 
 shall merely look on and not enquire too closely, they 
 feel that the matter is one with which they are entirely 
 precluded from dealing. When, again, having seen 
 what appears to them to present the character of a 
 very transparent conjuring trick, they ask for a repe- 
 tition of it under test conditions admitted to be fair, 
 their usual experience is that they wait in vain (for 
 hours it may be) for such repetition, and are then told 
 that they have brought an 'atmosphere of incredulity' 
 with them, which prevents the manifestation. — Now 
 
TABLE-TURNING, SPIRITUALISM. 9 
 
 I by no means affirm that the claims of Spirituah'sm 
 are ^/i-p roved by these failures ; but I do contend that 
 until the evidence advanced by believers in those 
 claims has stood the test of the same sifting and cross- 
 examination by sceptical experts, that would be ap- 
 plied in the case of any other scientific enquiry, it has 
 no claim upon general acceptance ; and I shall now 
 proceed to justify that contention by an appeal to the 
 history of previous enquiries of the like kind. 
 
 MESMERISM. 
 
 It was about the year 1772, that Mesmer, who had 
 previously published a dissertation On the Influence of 
 the Planets on the Hnnian Body, announced his dis- 
 covery of a universal fluid, * the immediate agent of 
 all the phenomena of nature, in which life originates, 
 and by which it is preserved ; ' and asserted that he 
 had further discovered the power of regulating the 
 operations of this fluid, to guide its current in healthy 
 channels, and to obliterate by its means the tracks of 
 disease. This power he in the first instance professed 
 to guide by the use of magnets ; but having quarrelled 
 with Father Hell, a professor of astronomy at Vienna, 
 who had furnished him with the magnets with which 
 he made his -experiments, and who then claimed the 
 discovery of their curative agency, Mesmer went on 
 to assert that he could concentrate the power in, and 
 liberate it from, any substance he pleased, could 
 charge jars with it (as with electricity) and discharge 
 them at his pleasure, and could cure by its means 
 
lo MESMERISM, ODVLISM, 
 
 the most intractable diseases.^ Having created a 
 great sensation in Bavaria and Switzerland by his 
 mysterious manipulations, and by the novel effects 
 which they often produced, Mesmer returned to 
 Vienna, and undertook to cure of complete blindness 
 a celebrated singer Mdlle. Paradis, who had been for 
 ten years unsuccessfully treated by the court physician. 
 His claim to a partial success, however, which was in the 
 first instance supported by his patient, seemed to have 
 been afterwards so completely disproved by careful 
 trials of her visual powers, that he found himself 
 obliged to quit Vienna abruptly ; and he thence pro- 
 ceeded to Paris, where he soon produced a great sen- 
 sation. The state of French society at that time, as 
 I have already remarked, was peculiarly favourable to 
 his pretensions. A feverish excitability prevailed, 
 which caused the public mind to be violently agitated 
 by every question it took up. And Mesmer soon 
 found it advantageous to challenge the Learned 
 Societies of the capital to enter the lists against him ; 
 the storm of opposition which he thus provoked 
 having the effect of bringing over to his side a large 
 number of devoted disciples and ardent partisans. 
 He professed to distribute the magnetic fluid to his 
 congregated patients, from a baquct or magnetic tub 
 which he had impregnated with it, each individual 
 holding a rod which proceeded from the baquct ; but 
 when the case was particularly interesting, or likely 
 to be particularly profitable, he took it in hand for 
 personal magnetisation. All the surroundings were 
 
 » Appendix D. 
 
TABLE-TURNING, SPIRITUALISM. ii 
 
 such as to favour, in the hysterical subjects who con- 
 stituted the great bulk of his patients, the nervous 
 paroxysm termed the 'crisis,' which was at once re- 
 cognised by medical men as only a modified form of 
 what is commonly known as a ' hysteric fit ; ' and the 
 influence of the *■ imitative * tendency was strongly 
 manifested just as in cases where such fits run through 
 a school, nunnery, factory, or revivalist meeting, ir 
 which a number of suitable subjects are collectec 
 together. And it was chiefly on account of the 
 moral disorders to which Mesmer's proceedings 
 seemed likely to give rise, that the French Govern- 
 ment directed a Scientific Commission, including the 
 most eminent savans of the time — such as Lavoisier, 
 Bailly, and Benjamin Franklin — to enquire into them. 
 After careful investigation they came to the conclusion 
 that there was no evidence whatever of any special 
 agency proceeding from the baqiiet ; for not only 
 w^ere they unable to detect the passage of any influence 
 from it, that was appreciable, either by electric, mag- 
 netic, or chemical tests, or by the evidence of any of 
 their senses ; but on blindfolding those who seemed 
 to be most susceptible to its supposed influence, all 
 its ordinary effects were produced when they were 
 without any connection with it, but believed that it ex- 
 isted. And so, when in a garden of which certain 
 trees had been magnetised, the patients, either when 
 blindfolded, or when ignorant which trees had been 
 magnetised, would be thrown into a convulsive fit if 
 they believed themselves to be near a magnetised tree, 
 
12 
 
 but were really at a distance from it ; whilst, con- 
 versely, no effect would follow their close proximity to 
 one of these trees, while they believed themselves to 
 be at a distance from any of them. Further, the Com- 
 missioners reported that, although some cures might 
 be wrought by the Mesmeric treatment, it was not 
 without danger, since the convulsions excited w^ere 
 often violent and exceedingly apt to spread, especially 
 among men feeble in body and weak in mind, and 
 almost universally among women ; and they dwelt 
 strongly also on the moral dangers which, as their 
 enquiries showed, attended these practices.^ 
 
 Now this Report, although referring to a form of 
 Mesmeric procedure which has long since passed into 
 disrepute, really deals with what I hold to be an 
 important principle of action, which, long vaguely 
 recognised under the term * imagination,' now takes a 
 definite rank in Physiological science ; — namely, that 
 in individuals of that excitable nervous temperament 
 which is known as ' hysterical ' (a temperament by no 
 means confined to women, but rare in healthy and 
 vigorous men), the expectation of a certain result is 
 often sufficient to evoke it. Of the influence of this 
 ' expectancy ' in producing most remarkable changes 
 in the bodily organism, either curative or morbid, the 
 history of Medicine affords abundant and varied 
 illustrations ; I shall presently show you that it can 
 generate sejtsations of a great variety of kinds ; and 
 I shall further prove that it operates no less remark- 
 ably in calling forth inovcniciits^ which, not being. 
 
 ' Appendix E. 
 
TABLE-TURNING, SPIRITUALISM. 13 
 
 consciously directed by the person who executes 
 them, have been attributed to hypothetical 'occult' 
 agencies. 
 
 I shall not trace the further history of Mesmer, or 
 of the system advocated by himself ; contenting my- 
 self with one ludicrous example of the absurdity of 
 his pretensions. When asked in his old age by one 
 of his disciples, why he ordered his patients to bathe 
 in river-water in preference to well-water, he replied 
 that it was because river-water is exposed to the sun's 
 rays ; and when further asked how these affected it in 
 any other way than by the warmth they excited, he 
 replied, " Dear doctor, the reason why all water ex- 
 " posed to the rays of the sun is superior to all other 
 " water, is because it is magnetised — since twenty years 
 ** ago / magnetised the sun ! " 
 
 In the hands of some of his pupils, however, 
 Animal Magnetism, or Mesmerism (as it gradually 
 came to be generally called), assumed an entirely 
 new development. It was discovered by the Marquis 
 de Puysegur, — a great landed proprietor, who appears 
 to have practised the art most disinterestedly for the 
 sole benefit of his tenantry and poor neighbours, — 
 that a state of profound insensibility might be induced 
 by very simple methods in some individuals, and a 
 state akin to somnambulism in others ; and this dis- 
 covery was taken up and brought into vogue by 
 numerous mesmerisers in France and Germany, 
 while, during the long Continental war and for some 
 time afterwards, it remained almost unknown in Eng- 
 land. Attention seems to have been first drawn to it 
 
14 MESMERISM, ODVLISM, 
 
 in this country by the publication of the account of a 
 severe operation performed in 1829 by M. Cloquet, 
 one of the most eminent surgeons of Paris, on a female 
 patient who had been thrown by mesmerism into a 
 state of somnambulism ; in which, though able to con- 
 verse with those around her, she showed herself en- 
 tirely insensible to pain, whilst of all that took place 
 in it she had subsequently no recollection whatever. 
 About twelve years afterwards, two amputations were 
 performed in our country, one in Nottinghamshire, 
 and the other in Leicestershire, upon mesmerised 
 patients, who showed no other sign of consciousness 
 than an almost inaudible moaning ; both of them ex- 
 hibiting an uninterrupted placidity of countenance, 
 and declaring, when brought back to their ordinary 
 state, that they were utterly unaware of what had 
 been done to them during their sleep. And not long 
 afterwards, Dr. Esdaile, a surgeon in Calcutta, gave 
 details of numerous most severe and tedious opera- 
 tions performed by him, without the infliction of pain, 
 upon natives in whom he had induced the mesmeric 
 sleep ; the rank of Presidency Surgeon being conferred 
 upon him by Lord Dalhousie (then Governor-General 
 of India), * in acknowledgment of the services he had 
 " rendered to humanity." The results of minor experi- 
 ments performed by various persons desirous of testing 
 the reality of this state, were quite in harmony with 
 these. Writing in 1845, Dr. Noble, of Manchester 
 with whom I was early brought into association by 
 Sir John Forbes in the pursuit of this enquiry,) said : 
 ** We have seen a needle thrust deeply under the 
 
TABLE-TURNING, SPIRITUALISM. 15 
 
 nail of a woman sleeping mcsmcrically, without its 
 exciting a quiver ; we have seen pungent snuff in 
 large quantities passed up the nostrils under the same 
 circumstances, without any sneezing being produced 
 until the patient was roused, many minutes afterwards: 
 we have noticed an immunity from all shock when 
 percussion caps have been discharged suddenly and 
 loudly close to the ear; and we have obsei-ved a 
 patient's little finger in the flame of a candle, and yet 
 no indication of pain. In this latter case all idea of 
 there having been courageous dissimulation was re- 
 moved from our mind, in seeing the same patient 
 evince both surprise and indignation at the treatment 
 received ; as, from particular circumstances, a sub- 
 stantial inconvenience was to result from the injury to 
 the finger, which was by no means slight." ^ 
 
 This 'mesmeric sleep' corresponds precisely in 
 character with what is known in medicine as ' hysteric 
 coma ; ' the insensibility being as profound, while it 
 lasts, as in the coma of narcotic poisoning or pressure 
 on the brain ; but coming on and passing off with such 
 suddenness as to show that it is dependent upon some 
 transient condition of the sensorium, which, with our 
 present knowledge, we can pretty certainly assign to 
 a reduction in the supply of blood caused by a sort of 
 spasmodic contraction of the blood-vessels. That 
 there is no adequate ground for regarding it as other- 
 wise than real, appears further from the discovery 
 made not long afterwards by Mr. Braid, a surgeon 
 practising at Manchester, that he could induce it by a 
 
 * British and Foreign Medical Reviric, April 1S45. 
 
1 6 MESMERISM, ODYLISM. 
 
 veiy simple method, which is not only even more 
 effective than the ' passes ' of the mesmeriser, but is 
 moreover quite independent of any other will than 
 that of the person who subjects himself to it. He 
 found that this state (which he designated as Hypnot- 
 ism) could be induced in a large proportion of indi- 
 viduals of either sex, and of all ranks, ages, and 
 temperaments, who determinately fix their gaze for 
 several minutes consecutively on an object brought so 
 near to their eyes, as to require a degree of conver- 
 gence of their axes that is maintainable only by a 
 strong effort.^ 
 
 The first state thus induced is usually one of 
 profound comatose sleep; the 'subject' not being 
 capable of being roused by sensory impressions of 
 any ordinary kind, and bearing without the least 
 indication of consciousness what would ordinarily pro- 
 duce intolerable uneasiness or even severe pain. But 
 after some little time, this state very commonly passes 
 into one of somnambulism, which again corresponds 
 
 * Mr. Braid's peculiar success in inducing this state seemed to 
 depend partly upon his mode of working his method, and partly upon 
 the ' expectancy ' of his subjects. Finding a bright object preferable, 
 he usually employed his silver lancet-case, which he held in the first 
 place at ordinary reading distance, rather above the plane of the eyes ; 
 he then slowly approximated it towards the middle point, a little above 
 the bridge of the nose, keeping his own eyes steadily fixed upon those 
 of his 'subject,' and watching carefully the direction of their axes. 
 If he perceived their convergence to be at all relaxed, he withdrew the 
 object until the axes were both again directed to it ; and then again 
 approximated it as closely as was compatible with their continued 
 convergence. When this could be maintained for a sufficient length of 
 time upon an obiect at no more than about three inches distance, the 
 comatose state generally supervened. 
 
TABLE-TURNING, SPIRITUALISM. 17 
 
 closely on the one hand with natural^ and on the 
 other with mesmeric somnambuHsm. In fact, it has 
 been by the study of the Somnambulism artificially 
 induced by Mr. Braid's process, that the essential 
 nature of this condition has been elucidated, and that 
 a scientific rationale can now be given of a large pro- 
 portion of the phenomena reported by Mesmcriscrs as 
 having been presented by their somnambules. 
 
 It has been claimed for certain Mesmeric som- 
 nambules, however, that they occasionally possess an 
 intelligence altogether superhuman as to things pre- 
 sent, past, and future, which has received the designa- 
 tion * lucidity ; ' and it is contended that the testimony 
 on which we accept the reality of phenomena which 
 are conformable to our scientific experience, ought to 
 satisfy us equally as to the genuineness of those 
 designated as ' the higher,' which not only transcend, 
 but absolutely contradict, what the mass of enlightened 
 men would regard as universal experience. This 
 contention, however, seems to me to rest upon an 
 entirely incorrect appreciation of the probative force 
 of evidence ; for, as I shall endeavour to prove to you 
 in my succeeding lecture, the only secure basis for our 
 belief on any subject, is the confirmation afforded to 
 external testimony by our sense of the inherent pro- 
 bability of the fact testified to ; so that, as has been 
 well remarked, " evidence tendered in support of what 
 " is new must correspond in strength with the degree 
 "of its incompatibility with doctrines generally admitted 
 " as true ; and, where statements obviously contravene 
 " all past experience and the universal consent of man- 
 
1 8 MESMERISM, ODVLISM, 
 
 " kind, any evidence is inadequate to the proof, which 
 '* is not complete, beyond suspicion, and absolutely in- 
 " capable of being explained away." 
 
 Putting aside for the present the discussion of 
 these asserted marvels, I shall try to set before you 
 briefly the essential character? which distinguish the 
 state of Somnambulism (whether natural or induced), 
 on the one hand from dreaming, and on the other 
 from the ordinary waking condition. As in both 
 these, the mind is in a state of activity ; but, as in 
 dreaming, its activity is free from that controlling 
 power of the will, by which it is directed in the waking 
 state ; and is also removed from this last by the com- 
 plete ignorance of all that has passed in it, which is 
 manifested by the ' subject ' when called back to his 
 waking self, — although the events of one access of this 
 •second consciousness' may vividly present them- 
 selves in the next, as if they had happened only just 
 before. Again, instead of all the senses being shut 
 up, as in ordinary dreaming sleep, some of them are 
 not only awake, but preternaturally impressible ; so 
 that the course of the somnambulist's thought may 
 be completely directed by suggestions of any kind 
 that can be conveyed from without through the sense- 
 channels which still remain open. But further, while 
 the mind of the ordinary dreamer can no more pro- 
 duce movements in his body than impressions on his 
 sense-organs can affect his mind, that of the Somnam- 
 bulist retains full direction of his body (in so far, at 
 least, as his senses serve to guide its movements) ; so 
 that he acts his dreams as if they were his waking 
 
TABLE-TURNING, SPIRITUALISM. 19 
 
 thoughts. The mesmerised or hypnotised Somnambulc 
 may, in fact, be characterised as a conscious automaton, 
 which, by appropriate suggestions, may be made to 
 think, feel, say, or do almost anything that its director 
 wills it to think, feel, say, or do ; with this remarkable 
 peculiarity, that its whole power seems concentrated 
 upon the state of activity in which it is at each 
 moment, so that every faculty it is capable of exerting 
 may become extraordinarily intensified. Thus, while 
 vision is usually suspended, the senses of hearing, 
 smell, and touch, with the muscular sense, are often 
 preternaturally acute ; in consequence, it would seem, 
 of the undistracted concentration of the attention on 
 their indications. I could give you many curious 
 instances of this, which I have myself witnessed ; as 
 also of the great exertion of muscular power by sub- 
 jects of extremely feeble physique : ^ but as they are 
 all obviously referrible to this one simple principle, I 
 need not dwell on their details, preferring to narrate 
 one which I did not myself witness, but which was 
 reported to me on most trustworthy authority, of a 
 remarkable manifestation of a power of imitative 
 vocalisation that is ordinarily attainable only after 
 long practice. When Jenny Lind was singing at 
 Manchester, she was invited by Mr. Braid to hear the 
 performances of one of his hypnotised subjects, an 
 illiterate factory girl, who had an excellent voice and 
 ear, but whose musical powers had received scarcely 
 any cultivation. This girl in the hypnotic state 
 followed the Swedish nightingale's songs in different 
 
 * Appendix F. 
 
20 MESMERISM, ODYLISM, 
 
 languaj^es both instantaneously and correctly ; and 
 when, in order to test her powers, Mdlle. Lind extem- 
 porised a long- and elaborate chromatic exercise, she 
 imitated this with no less precision, though unable in 
 her waking state even to attempt anything of the sort. 
 " She caught the sounds so promptly," says Mr. Braid, 
 " and gave both words and music so simultaneously 
 " and correctly, that several persons present could not 
 " discriminate whether there were two voices or only 
 " one." 
 
 Now I wish you to compare this case with another, 
 which was reported about the same time upon what 
 seemed equally unexceptionable testimony. When 
 Miss Martineau first avowed her conversion to Mes- 
 merism, the extraordinary performances of her servant 
 
 J were much talked of; and among other marvels 
 
 it was asserted that she could converse, when in her 
 mesmeric state, in languages she had never learned, 
 and of which she knew nothing when aw^ake ; the 
 particular fact being explicitly stated, that Lord 
 Morpeth had tested this power and had found it real. 
 You will readily perceive that supposing the testi- 
 mony in this case to have been exactly the same as 
 in the preceding, its probative force would have been 
 \ cry different. For the first of them, though unprece- 
 dented, presented no scientific improbability to those 
 who were prepared by their careful study of the 
 phenomena of Hypnotism, to believe that the power 
 of imitative vocalisation, like any other, might be in- 
 tensified by the concentration of the soinnabule's 
 \'.li<)lc attention upon the performance. lUit it seemed 
 
TABLE-TURNING, SPIRITUALISM, 21 
 
 inconceivable that an uneducated servant girl could 
 understand what was said to her in a language she 
 had never learned ; still more, that she should be able 
 to reply in the same language. And the only rational 
 explanation of the fact, if fact it was, short of a mira- 
 cle, must have lain, either in her having learned the 
 language long before and subsequently forgotten it, 
 or in her being able by * thought-reading ' (which is 
 maintained by some, even at the present time, to be 
 one of the attributes of the mesmeric state) to divine 
 and express the answer expected by Lord Morpeth. 
 But the marvel was entirely dissipated by the enqui- 
 ries of Dr. Noble ; who, being very desirous of getting 
 at the exact truth, first applied for information to a 
 near relative of Miss Martineau, and was told by him 
 that the report was not quite accurate, for that on 
 
 Lord Morpeth putting a question to J in a foreign 
 
 language, J had replied appropriately in her own 
 
 vernacular. Her comprehension of Lord Morpeth's 
 question, however, appeared in itself sufficiently strange 
 to be suggestive of some fallacy ; and having an op- 
 portunity, not long afterwards, of asking Lord ]\Ior- 
 peth himself what was the real state of the case, 
 Dr. Noble learned from him that when he put a question 
 
 to J in a foreign language, she imitated his speech 
 
 after a fashion by an unmeaning articulation of sound. 
 On the lesson which this case affords as to the 
 credibility of testimony in regard to what are called 
 the 'higher phenomena' of Mesmerism, I shall en- 
 large in my succeeding lecture ; and at present I shall 
 only remark that it was shown by careful comparison 
 
22 MESMERIS.]r, ODYLISM, 
 
 between the phenomena displayed by the same indi- 
 viduals, when ' mesmerised ' in the ordinary way, and 
 ' hypnotised ' by Mr. Braid's process, that there was 
 no other difference between the two states, than that 
 arising from the special rapport between the mesme- 
 riser and his 'subject ' ; and that this was clearly expli- 
 cable by the 'expectancy' under which the 'subject' 
 passed into the state of second consciousness. For 
 Mr. Braid found himself able, by assuring his 'sub- 
 jects* during the induction of the coma that they 
 would hear the voice of one particular person and no 
 other, to establish this rapport with any person he 
 might choose: the case being strictly analogous to 
 the awaking of the telegraph-clerk by the clicking of 
 his needles, of the doctor by his night-bell, or of the 
 mother by her infant's cry, though all would sleep 
 soundly through far louder noises to which they felt 
 no call to attend. And thus, as was pointed out long 
 since by Dr. Noble and myself, not only may the 
 general reality of the Mesmeric Somnambulism be 
 fully admitted, but a scientific rationale may be found 
 for its supposed distinctive peculiarities, without the 
 assumption of any special 'magnetic' or 'mesmeric' 
 agency. 
 
 It is affirmed, however, that proof of this agency 
 is furnished by the power of the ' silent will ' of the 
 Mesmeriser to induce the sleep in subjects \vho are 
 not in the least aware that it is being exerted, and 
 further, to direct from a distance the actions of the 
 Somnambule. Doubtless, if satisfactory proof of this 
 assertion could be furnished, it would ^go far to estab- 
 
TABLE-TURNING, SPIRITUALISM. 23 
 
 lish the claim. But nothing is more difficult than to 
 eliminate all sources of fallacy in this matter. For 
 while it is admitted by Mesmerisers that the belief 
 that the influence is being exerted is quite sufficient, 
 in habitual somnambules, to induce the result, it is 
 equally certain that such ' sensitives ' are marvellously 
 quick at guessing from slight intimations what is ex- 
 pected to happen. And it has been repeatedly found 
 that mesmerisers who had no hesitation in asserting 
 that they could send particular * subjects ' to sleep, or 
 could affect them in other ways, by an effort of silent 
 will, have utterly failed to do so when these ' subjects ' 
 were carefully kept from any suspicion that such will 
 was being exerted. Thus Dr. Noble has recorded the 
 case of a friend of his own, who, believing himself 
 able thus to influence a female servant whom he had 
 repeatedly mesmerised, accepted with the full assur- 
 ance of confident faith a proposal to make this 
 experiment in Dr. Noble's house instead of his own. 
 The girl, having been sent thither with a note, was 
 told to sit down in Dr. Noble's consulting-room while 
 the' answer was being wTitten ; her chair being close 
 to a partially-open door, on the other side of which 
 her master, whom she supposed to be elsewhere, had 
 previously taken up his position. Although this gen- 
 tleman had usually found two or three minutes 
 sufficient to send the girl to sleep, when he was in his 
 own drawing-room and she was in the kitchen, the two 
 being separated by intervening walls and flooring, yet 
 when he put forth his whole force for a quarter of an 
 hour within two feet of her, with only a partially closed 
 
2^ MESMERISM, ODYLISM, 
 
 door between them, it was entirely without result ; 
 and no other reason for the failure could be assigned 
 than her entire freedom from expectancy. So in 
 another case, in which Mr. Lewus (accounted one of 
 the most powerful Mesmerists of his time) undertook 
 to direct the actions of his somnambule in the next 
 room, according to a programme agreed on between 
 himself and one set of witnesses, — whilst the actions 
 actually performed were recorded and timed by 
 another set, — there was found to be so complete a 
 discordance betw^een the programme ' willed * and the 
 actions really executed, as entirely to negative the 
 idea of any dependence of the latter upon the directing 
 power of the mesmeriser.^ Mr. Lewis w^as challenged 
 to this test-experiment by Professors of the University 
 of Aberdeen, in consequence of his public assertion 
 that he had repeatedly induced the mesmeric sleep, 
 and had directed the operations of his somnambules, 
 by the exertion of his ' silent will ' from a distance. 
 His utter failure to produce either result, however, 
 under the scrutiny of sceptical enquirers, obviously 
 discredits all his previous statements ; except to such 
 as (like Mr. A. R. Wallace, who has recently expressed 
 his full faith in Mr, Lewis's self-asserted powers,) are 
 ready to accept without question the slenderest evi- 
 dence of the greatest marvels. Further, when chal- 
 lenged to give proof before the same Committee, of 
 the power he had publicly claimed of overcoming the 
 force of gravity by raising a man from the ground and 
 keeping him suspended in the air for a short time, 
 
TABLE-TURNING, SPIRITUALISM. 25 
 
 simply by holding his hand above the man's head and 
 willing the result, Mr. Lewis admitted "that he had 
 *' no such power, and that he could only influence 
 *' a person lying on the ground so as to make him start 
 " up, though others were endeavouring to hold him 
 " down." Now I would ask you to compare this dis- 
 claimer, made to a body of sceptical Professors of 
 Aberdeen, whose published report of it was never 
 impugned by ]\Ir. Lewis, with the assertion made to 
 and accepted by Professor Gregory of Edinburgh : — 
 " When Mr. Lewis stood on a chair, and tried to draw 
 "Mr. H., without contact, from the ground, he gradu- 
 " ally rose on tiptoe, making the most violent efforts to 
 " rise, till he was fixed by cataleptic rigidity. Mr. Lewis 
 "said, that had he been still more elevated above Mr. 
 " H., he could have raised him from the floor without 
 "contact, and held him tJms suspended for a short time, 
 " zvhilesome spectator should pass his hand under Jiisfeet. 
 " Although this was not done in my presence, yet the 
 "attraction upwards was so strong, \hdXl seenoreasoji 
 " to doubt the statement made to me by Mr. Lewis and 
 " others zvho saw it, that this experiment has been suecess- 
 '' fully performed.'^ One is inclined to say of such 
 pretenders, and of the believers in them, " These be 
 thy gods, O Israel." 
 
 A converse experiment performed by Dr. Elliotson 
 himself, satisfied him that ' expectancy ' would take 
 the place of what he maintained to be the real Mes- 
 meric influence. Having told one of his habituces that 
 he would go into the next room and mesmerise her 
 
 ' Letters to a Candid Euqtiirer 07i Animal Maguetisvi, p. 352. 
 
26 MESMERISM, ODYLISM, 
 
 through the door, he retired, shut the door, performed 
 no mesmeric passes, but tried to forget her, walked 
 away from the door, busied himself with some- 
 thing else, and even walked into a third room ; and 
 on returning in less than ten minutes found the 
 girl in her usual sleep-waking condition. The ex- 
 treme susceptibility of many of these * sensitive ' sub- 
 jects further accounts for their being affected (without 
 any intentional deceit) by physical impressions which 
 are quite imperceptible to others : — such as slight 
 differences in temperature, when two coins are p're- 
 sented to them, of which one has been held in the 
 hand of the mesmeriser ; or two wine-glasses of water, 
 into one of which he has dipped his finger for a short 
 time. But the belief that he has transmitted his 
 influence in any mode is quite sufficient to produce the 
 result ; as was shown in an amusing case recorded by 
 M. Bertrand, whose treatise on Animal IlagJietisni 
 (Paris, 1826) is, by far, the most philosophical work 
 extant on the subject. Having occasion to go a jour- 
 ney of a hundred leagues, leaving a female somnam- 
 bule under the treatment of one of his friends, 
 M. Bertrand sent him a magnetised letter, which he 
 requested him to place on the stomach of the patient, 
 who had been led to anticipate the expected results ; 
 Mesmeric sleep, with the customary phenomena, super- 
 vened. He then wrote another letter which he did 
 not magnetise, and sent it to her in the same manner, 
 and with the same intimation. She again fell into the 
 Mesmeric sleep, which was attributed to the letter 
 having been unititcntionalK' impregnated by M. Bcr- 
 
TABLE-TURNING, SPIRITUALISM. 27 
 
 trand with the mesmeric fluid while he was writing it. 
 Desiring to test the matter still further, he caused one 
 of his friends to write a similar letter, imitating his 
 handwriting so closely that those who received it 
 should believe it to be his ;~the same effect was once 
 more produced. 
 
 And so it was with the large number of experi- 
 ments that were made within my own knowledge 
 during the twenty years' attention that I gave to this 
 subject, with a view to test the Mesmeriser's power of 
 inducing any of the phenomena of this state without 
 the patient's consciousness. Successes, it is true, were 
 not unfrequent ; but these almost invariably occurred 
 when the experiments were made under conditions to 
 which the parties had become habituated, as in the 
 case of Dr. Noble's friend. For his performances were 
 so continually being repeated to satisfy the curiosity 
 of visitors, that Dr. Noble's call at his house would 
 have been sufficient to excite, on the part of the 
 'subject,' the expectancy that would have thrown 
 her into the sleep. But when such expectancy was 
 carefully guarded against, the result was so constantly 
 negative, as — I will not say to disprove the existence 
 of any special Mesmeric force, — but to neutralise com- 
 pletely the affirmative value of the evidence adduced 
 to prove it. For I think you must now agree with me, 
 that, if 'expectancy' alone is competent to produce 
 the results, as admitted by the most intelligent Mes- 
 merisers, nothing but the most rigid exclusion of 
 such expectancy can afford the least ground for the 
 assumption of any other agency. And my own 
 
28 MESMERISM, ODYLTSM, 
 
 prolonged study of the subject further justifies me in 
 taking the position, that it is only when the enquiry 
 is directed, and its results recorded, by sceptical experts^ 
 that such results have the least claim to scientific 
 value. The disposition to overlook sources of fallacy, 
 to magnify trivialities into marvels, to construct 
 circumstantial 'myths' (as in the case of Miss Marti- 
 neau's J and Lord Morpeth) on the slightest foun- 
 dation of fact, and to allow themselves to be imposed 
 upon by cunning cheats, have been so constantly 
 exhibited by even the most honest believers in the 
 * occult ' power of Mesmerism, as — not only in my 
 own opinion, but in that of my very able allies in this 
 enquiry — to deprive the unconfirmed testimony of any 
 number of such believers, in regard to matters lying 
 beyond scientific experience, of all claim to acceptance. 
 In fact, the positions taken in regard to Mesmerism 
 by my friend Dr. Noble, as far back as 1845,* and 
 more fully developed by myself a few years later on 
 the basis of Mr. Braid's experiments and of my own 
 Physiological and Psychologicalstudies,^ have, not only 
 in our own judgment, but by the general verdict of 
 the Medical and Scientific world, been fully confirmed 
 by the subsequent course of events, the history of 
 which I shall now proceed to sketch. 
 
 ' British and Foreign Medical RevieT.v, vol. xix, 
 
 2 Principles of Human Physiology, 4th edition, 1853 ; Quarterly 
 Rerieiv, October, 1853. 
 
TABLE-TURMXG, SPIRITUyiLISM. 29 
 
 ODYLISM. 
 
 It was asserted, about thirty years ago, by Baron 
 von Reichenbach, — whose researches on the Chemistry 
 of the Hydrocarbons constitute the foundation of our 
 present knowledge of paraffin and its aUied products 
 of the distillation of coal,— that he had found certain 
 ' sensitive ' subjects so peculiarly affected by the neigh- 
 bourhood of Magnets or Crystals, as to justify the 
 assumption of a special polar force which he termed 
 Odyle, allied to, but not identical with, Magnetism ; 
 present in all material substances, though generally 
 in a less degree than in magnets and crystals ; but 
 called into energetic activity by any kind of physical 
 or chemical change, and, therefore, especially abun- 
 dant in the Human body. Of the existence of this 
 Odylic force, which he identified with the * animal 
 magnetism ' of Mesmer, he found what he maintained 
 to be adequate evidence in the peculiar sensations and 
 attractions experienced by his 'sensitives' when in the 
 neighbourhood either of Magnets or Crystals, or of 
 Human beings specially charged with it. After a 
 magnet had been repeatedly drawn along the arm of 
 one of these 'subjects,' she would feel a pricking, 
 streaming, or shooting sensation ; she would smell 
 odours proceeding from it ; or she would see a small 
 volcano of flame issuing from its poles, when gazing 
 at them, even in broad daylight. As in the Mesmeric 
 sleep light is often seen by the somnambule to issue 
 from the operator's fingers, so the Odylic light v>ras 
 
30 MESMERISM, ODYLISM, 
 
 discerned in the dark by Von Relchenbach's ' sensi- 
 tives,' issuing not only from the hands, but from the 
 head, eyes, and mouth of powerful generators of this 
 force. One individual in particular was so peculiarly 
 sensitive, that she saw (in the dark) sparks and flames 
 issuing from ordinary nails and hooks in a wall. It 
 was further affirmed that certain of these ' sensitives * 
 found their hands so powerfully attracted by magnets 
 or crystals, as to be irresistibly drawn towards them ; 
 and thus that if the attracting object were forcibly 
 drawn away, not only the hand, but the whole body 
 of the sensitive was dragged after it. Another set of 
 facts was adduced to prove the special relation of 
 Odyle to terrestrial Magnetism, — namely, that many 
 * sensitives ' cannot sleep in beds which lie across the 
 magnetic meridian ; a position at right angles to it 
 being to some quite intolerable. 
 
 Von Relchenbach's doctrine came before the British 
 public under the authority of the late Dr. Gregory, 
 then Professor of Chemistry in the University of 
 Edinburgh ; who went so far as to affirm that " by a 
 " laborious and beautiful investigation, Reichenbach 
 *' had demonstrated the existence of a force, influence, 
 " or imponderable fluid — whatever name begiventoit — 
 " which is distinct from all the known forces, influences, 
 ** or imponderable fluids, such as heat, light, electricity, 
 " magnetism, and from the attractions, such as gravita- 
 " tion, or chemical attraction." It at once became ap- 
 parent, however, to experienced Physicians conversant 
 with the proteiform manifestations of that excitable, 
 nervous temperament, of which I have already had to 
 
TABLE-TURNING, SPIRITUALISM. 31 
 
 speak, that all these sensations were of the kind 
 which the Physiologist terms ' subjective ; ' the state 
 of the Sensorium on which they immediately depend, 
 being the resultant, not of physical impressions made 
 by external agencies upon the Organs of Sense, but 
 of Cerebral changes connected with the ideas with 
 which the minds of the * sensitives ' had come to be 
 * possessed.' The very fact that no manifestation of 
 the supposed force could be obtained except through 
 a conscious Human organism, should have been quite 
 sufficient to suggest to any philosophic investigator 
 that he had to do, not with a new Physical Force, but 
 with a peculiar phase of Physiological action, by no 
 means unfamiliar to those who had previously studied 
 the influence of the Mind upon the Body. As Mr, 
 Braid justly remarked, "It unfortunately happens 
 " that the only test of this alleged new Force is the 
 " Human Nerve ; and not only so, but it is further ad- 
 " mitted that its existence can only be demonstrated 
 *' by certain impressions imparted to, or experienced 
 *' by, a comparatively small iitimber of highly sensitive 
 ** and nervous subjects. But it is an undoubted fact 
 " that with many individuals, and especially of the 
 ** highly nervous, and imaginative, and abstractive 
 "classes, a strong direction of inward consciousness to 
 " any part of the body, especially if attended with the 
 " expectation or belief of something being about to 
 " happen, is quite sufficient to cha7ige the physical action 
 " of the part, and to produce such impressions from this 
 ^' cause alone, as Baron ReichcnbacJi attributes to his7iew 
 ^' force. Thus every variety of feeling may be excited 
 
32 MESMERISM, ODYLISM, 
 
 " from an internal or mental cause — such as heat or 
 *'cold, pricking, creeping, tingHng, spasmodic twitching 
 "of muscles, catalepsy, a feeling of attraction orrepul- 
 ** sion, sights of every form or hue, odours, tastes, and 
 '* sounds, in endless variety, and so on, according as ac- 
 " cident or intention may have suggested. Moreover, 
 " the oftener such impressions have been excited, the 
 " more readily may they be reproduced, under similar 
 "circumstances, through the laws of association and 
 " habit. Such being the fact, it must consequently be 
 " obvious to every intelligent and unprejudiced person, 
 " that no implicit reliance can be placed on the Human 
 " Nerve, as a test of this new power in producing 
 " effects from external impressions or influences ; since 
 " precisely the same phenomena may arise from an 
 " inter?ial or mental influence, when no external agency 
 •' whatever is in operation." ^ 
 
 The fact, which Von Reichenbach himself was 
 honest enough to admit — that when a magnet was 
 poised in a delicate balance, and the hand of a'sensitive* 
 was placed above or beneath it, the magnet was never 
 drawn towards the hand — ought to have convinced 
 him that the force which attracted the ' sensitive's * 
 hand to the magnet has nothing in common with 
 physical attractions, whose action is invariably ?ra- 
 procal ; but that it was the product of her own con- 
 viction that she must thus approximate it. So 
 'possessed' was he, however, by his pseudo-scientific 
 conception, that the true* significance of this fact 
 entirely escaped him'; and although he considered 
 that he had taken adequate precautions to exclude 
 
 ' A striking illustration of this principle will be found in Appendix 1 1. 
 
TABLE-TURNING, SPIRITUALISM. 33 
 
 the conveyance of any suggestion of which his 
 'sensitives' should be conscious, he never tried the 
 one test which would have been the experimcntinn 
 criicis in regard to all the supposed influences of 
 Magnets, — that of using electro-magnets, which could 
 be * made ' and ' unmade ' by completing or breaking 
 the electric circuit, without any indication being given 
 to the 'sensitive' of this change of its conditions. 
 And the same remark applies to the more recent 
 statement of Lord Lindsay, as to Mr. Home's recog- 
 nition of the position of a permanent magnet in a 
 totally darkened room ; the value of this solitary fact, 
 for which there are plenty of ways of accounting, 
 never having been tested by the use of an Electro- 
 magnet, whose active or passive condition should be 
 entirely unknown, not only to Mr. Home, but to every 
 person present. 
 
 That ' sensitives ' like Von Reichenbach's, in so far 
 as they are not intentional deceivers (which many 
 hysterical subjects are constitutionally prone to be), 
 can feel, see, or smell anything that they were led to 
 believe that they would feel, see, or smell, was soon 
 proved by the experimental enquiries of Mr. Braid, 
 many of which I myself witnessed.* He found that 
 not only in hysterical girls, but in many men and 
 women "of a highly concentrative and imaginative 
 " turn of mind," though otherwise in ordinary health, it 
 was sufficient to fix the attention on any particular 
 form of expectancy, — such as pricking, streaming, heat, 
 cold, or other feelings, in any part of the body over 
 • Appendix I. 
 
34 MESMERISM, ODYLISM, 
 
 which a magnet was being drawn ; luminous emana- 
 tions from the poles of a magnet in the dark, in some 
 cases even in full daylight ; or the attraction of a 
 magnet or crystal held within reach of the hand, — for 
 that expectancy to be fully realised. And, conversely, 
 the same sensations were equally produced when the 
 subjects of them were led to believe that the same 
 agency was being employed, although nothing what- 
 ever was really done ; the same flames being seen 
 when the magnet was concealed by shutting it in a 
 box, or even when it was carried out of the room, 
 without the knowledge of the subject ; and the attrac- 
 tion of the magnet for the hand being entirely 
 governed by the idea previously suggested, positive 
 or negative results being thus obtained with either 
 pole, as Mr. Braid might direct. 
 
 I had myself the opportunity of witnessing these 
 ' vigilant phenomena ' (as Mr. Braid termed them, 
 from their being presented by individuals not asleep, 
 though in a state of abstraction) upon one of Mr. 
 Braid's best ' subjects,' a gentleman residing in 
 Manchester, well knov/n for his high intellectual 
 culture, great general ability, and strict probity. 
 He had such a remarkable power of voluntary ab- 
 straction, as to be able at any time to induce in 
 himself a state akin to profound Reverie (corre- 
 sponding to what has been since most inappropriately 
 called the * biologicar), in which he became so com- 
 pletely * possessed ' by any idea strongly enforced 
 upon him, that his whole state of feeling and action 
 was dominated by it. Thus it was sufficient for him 
 to place his hand upon the table, and rix his attention 
 
TABLE-TURNING, SPIRITUALISM. 35 
 
 upon it for half a minute, to be entirely unable to 
 withdraw it, if assured in a determined tone that he 
 could not do so. When his gaze had been steadily 
 directed for a short time to the poles of a magnet, he 
 could be brought to see flames issuing from them, of 
 any form or colour that Mr. Braid chose to name. 
 And when desired to place his hand upon one of the 
 poles, and to fix his attention for a brief period upon 
 it, the peremptoiy assurance that he could not detach 
 it was sufficient to hold it there with such tenacity, 
 that I saw Mr. Braid drag him round the room by 
 the traction of the magnet which he held, in a way 
 that reminded me of George Cruikshank's amus- 
 ing illustration of the German fairy story of the 
 Golden Goose. The attraction was dissolved by Mr. 
 Braid's loud cheery ^ All right, man,' which brought 
 the subject back to his normal condition, as suddenly 
 as the attraction of a powerful Electro-magnet for a 
 heavy mass of iron ceases when the circuit is broken. 
 
 ELECTRO-BIOLOGY. 
 
 Similar experiments to the foregoing (which I first 
 witnessed about thirty years ago) have been since 
 repeated, over and over again, upon great numbers of 
 persons, in whom a corresponding state can be induced 
 by prolonged fixation of the vision on a small object 
 held in the hand. It was in the year 1850 that a new 
 manifestation of the supposed 'occult' power first 
 attracted public attention, through the exhibition of 
 it by a couple of itinerant Americans, who styled 
 
36 MESMERISM, ODYLISM, 
 
 themselves 'professors' of a new art which they 
 termed Ekciro-Biology ; asserting that by an influence 
 of which the secret was only known to themselves, but 
 which was partially derived from a little disk of zinc 
 or copper held in the hand of the 'subject' and 
 steadily gazed on by him, they could subjugate the 
 most determined Avill, paralyse the strongest muscles, 
 pervert the evidence of the senses, destroy the memory 
 of even the most familiar things or of the most recent 
 occurrences, induce obedience to any command, or 
 make the individual believe himself transformed into 
 anyone else ;— all this, and much more, being done 
 while he was still wide awake. They soon attracted 
 large assemblages to witness their performances ; and 
 seldom failed to elicit some of the most remarkable 
 phenomena from entire strangers to them, whose 
 honesty could not be reasonably called in question. 
 In place of a few peculiarly susceptible ' subjects ' not 
 always to be met with, and open to suspicion on 
 various grounds, those who took up this practice 
 found in almost every circle some individuals in whom 
 the 'biological' state could be self-induced by the 
 steady direction of their eyes to one point, at the 
 ordinary reading distance, for a period usually varying 
 from about five to twenty nn'nutes ; a much shorter 
 time generally sufficing in cases in which the practice 
 has been frequently repeated. In this condition, the 
 whole course of thought is directed by external sug- 
 gestions, the subject's own control over it being alto- 
 gether suspended. Yet he difl"ers from the somnam- 
 bulist in being awake ; that is, he has generally the 
 
TABLE-TURNING, SPIRITUALISM. 37 
 
 use of all his senses, and usually, though not always, 
 preserves a distinct recollection of all that has taken 
 place. There is, in fact, a gradational transition from 
 the * biological ' to the ' mesmeric ' state ; just as there 
 is a passage from the state of profound reverie or 
 'day-dreaming' to that of ordinary sleep. All its 
 strange phenomena are referrible to one simple prin- 
 ciple — the possession of the mind by a doniiiiant idea, 
 from which, however absurd it may be, the subject 
 cannot free himself by bringing it to the test of actual 
 experience, because the suspension of his self-directing 
 power prevents him from correcting his ideational state 
 by comparing it with external realities ; this suspen- 
 sion being often as com.plete as it is in dreaming, so 
 that, though the senses are awake, they cannot be 
 turned to account. But it may exist in regard to one 
 sense only, the impressions made on others being 
 truly represented to the mind. Thus I have seen 
 instances in which a 'biologised' subject could be 
 made to believe himself to be tasting anything which 
 the operator might assure him that he zuould taste — 
 such as milk, coffee, wine, or porter — when drinking 
 a glass of pure water, though he was instantly dis- 
 abused by looking at the liquid ; whilst another would 
 sec milk or coffee, wine or porter, as he w^as directed, 
 but would instantly set himself right when he tasted 
 the liquid. Nothing can be more instructive than to 
 experiment upon a subject who has no misgivings of 
 this kind, but whose perceptions are altogether under 
 the direction of the ideas impressed upon him. He 
 may be made to exhibit all the manifestations of 
 
38 MESMERISM, ODVLISM, 
 
 delight which would be called forth by the viands or 
 liquors of w^hich he may be most fond ; and these 
 may be turned in a moment into expressions of the 
 strongest disgust, by simply giving the word which 
 shall (ideally) change it into something he detests. 
 Or if, when he believes himself to be drinking a cup 
 of tea or coffee, he be made to believe that it is very 
 hot, nothing will induce him to take more than a sip 
 at a time ; yet a moment afterwards he will be ready 
 to swallow the whole in gulps, if assured that the 
 liquid is quite cool. Tell him, again, that his seat is 
 growing hot under him, and that he will not be able 
 to remain long upon it, and he will fidget uneasily for 
 some time, and at last start up with all the indica- 
 tions of having found the heat no longer bearable. 
 Whilst he is firmly grasping a stick in his hand, let 
 him be assured that it will burn him if he continue to 
 hold it, or that it is becoming so heavy that he can no 
 • longer sustain it ; and he will presently drop it with 
 gestures conformable in each case to the idea. 
 
 It may, of course, be said that what I have pre- 
 sented to you as real phenomena are only simulated ; 
 and as there would be nothing difficult in such 
 simulation, the supposition is clearly admissible. But 
 they are so perfectly conformable to the known prin- 
 ciples of Mental action, that there is no justification 
 for the suspicion of deceit, when they are presented 
 by persons in whose good faith we have reasonable 
 grounds of confidence. P'or everyone must be con- 
 scious of occasional mistakes as to what he supposes 
 himself to have seen or heard, which he can trace to 
 
TABLE-TURNING, SPIRITUALISM. 39 
 
 a previous ' expectancy.' Of this I can give you a 
 very striking illustration in a case narrated by Dr. 
 Tuke. A lady, whose mind had been a good deal 
 occupied on the subject of drinking-fountains, was 
 walking from Penryn to Falmouth, and thought she 
 saw in the road a newly-erected fountain, with the 
 inscription, ' If any man thirst, let him come hither 
 and drink.' Some time afterwards, on mentioning 
 the fact with pleasure to the daughters of a gentleman 
 whom she supposed to have erected it, she was 
 greatly surprised to learn from them that no such 
 drinking-fountain existed ; and on subsequently re- 
 pairing to the spot, she found nothing but a few stones, 
 which constituted the foundation on which her ex- 
 pectant imagination had built an ideal superstructure. 
 The same may be said with regard to the control 
 exercised over the muscular movements of the Biolo- 
 gised ' subject,' by the persuasion that he imist or that 
 he cannot perform a particular action. His hands 
 being placed in contact with one another, he is 
 assured that he cannot separate them ; and they re- 
 main as if firmly glued together, in spite of all his 
 apparent efforts to draw them apart. Or, a hand 
 being held up before him, he is assured that he can- 
 not succeed in striking it ; and not only does all his 
 power seem inadequate to the performance of this 
 simple action, but it actually is so, as long as he 
 remains convinced of its entire impossibility. So I 
 have seen a strong man chained down to his chair, 
 prevented from stepping over a stick on the floor, or 
 obliged to remain almost doubled upon himself in a 
 
40 MESMERISM, ODYLISM, 
 
 stooping position, by the assurance that he could not 
 move. On the other hand, an extraordinary power 
 may be called forth in any set of muscles — as in 
 Hypnotised subjects — by the assurance that the action 
 to be performed by them may be executed with the 
 greatest facility. This, again, is quite conformable to 
 ordinary experience ; the assurance that we can per- 
 form some feat of strength or dexterity, nerving us to 
 the effort ; whilst our power is w^eakened by our own 
 doubts of success, still more by the unfavourable im- 
 pression produced by a confident prediction of failure. 
 It is only needed for the mind to become completely 
 * possessed ' by the one or the other conviction, for it 
 to produce the bodily results of this kind which I have 
 over and over again witnessed. 
 
 Now the phenomena of the ' Biological ' condition 
 seem to me of peculiar significance, in relation to a 
 large class of those which are claimed as manifesta- 
 tions of a supposed ' Spiritual ' agency. When a num- 
 ber of persons of that *' concentrative and imaginative 
 turn of mind" which predisposes them to this condi- 
 tion, sit for a couple of hours (especially if in the dark) 
 with the expectation of some extraordinary occur- 
 rence, — such as the rising and floating in the air, either 
 of the human body, or of chairs or tables, without any 
 physical agency ; the crawling of live lobsters over 
 their persons ; the contact of the hands, the sound of 
 the voices, or the visible luminous shapes,^ of their 
 
 ' T put aside the question of fraud, to whicli recourse has doubtless 
 often been had for the production of these phenomena ; being satisfied 
 that they are often genuinely 'subjective.' 
 
TABLE-TURNING, SPIRITUALISM. 41 
 
 departed friends,— it is perfectly conformable to scien- 
 tiiic probability that they should pass more or less 
 completely (like Reichenbach's ' sensitives ') into a 
 state which is neither waking nor sleeping, but between 
 the two, in which they see, hear, or feel by touch, 
 anything they have been led to expect will present 
 itself. And the accordance of their testimony, in 
 regard to such occurrences, is only such as is produced 
 by the community of the * dominant idea ' with which 
 they are all * possessed,' a community of which history 
 furnishes any amount of strangely-varied examples. 
 And thu5 it becomes obvious that the testimony of a 
 single cool-headed sceptic, who asserts that nothing 
 extraordinary has really occurred, should be accepted 
 as more trustworthy than that of any number of be- 
 lievers, who have, as it were, created the sensorial 
 result by their anticipation of it. 
 
 TENDULE EXPLORATEUR. 
 
 I have now to show you that the like * expectancy ' 
 can also produce movements of various kinds through 
 the instrumentality of the nervo-muscular apparatus, 
 without the least consciousness on the part of its sub- 
 ject of his being himself the instrument of their per- 
 formance ; a physiological fact which is the key to the 
 whole mystery of Table-turning and Table-talking. 
 I very well remember the prevalence, in my school- 
 boy days, of a belief that when a ring, a button, or 
 any other small body, suspended by a string over the 
 end of the finger, was brought near the outside or 
 
42 MESMERISM, ODYLISM, 
 
 inside of a glass tumbler, it would strike the hour of 
 the day against its surface ; and the experiment cer- 
 tainly succeeded in the hands of several of my school- 
 fellows, who tried it in all good faith, getting up in 
 the middle of the night to test it, in entire ignorance — 
 as they declared— of the real time. But, as was pointed 
 out by M. Chevreul, who investigated this subject in 
 a truly scientific spirit more than forty years ago,^ it 
 is impossible by any voluntary effort to keep the hand 
 absolutely still for a length of time in the position 
 required ; an involuntary tremulousness is always ob- 
 servable in the suspended body ; and if the attention 
 be fixed on it with the expectation that its vibrations 
 will take a definite direction, they are very likely to 
 do so. But their persistence in that direction is found 
 to last only so long as they are guided by the sight 
 of the operator ; the oscillations at once and entirely 
 losing their constancy, if he closes or turns away his 
 eyes. Thus it became obvious that, in the striking 
 of the hour, the influence which determines the num- 
 ber of strokes is really the knowledge or suspicion 
 present to the mifid of the operator, which involuntarily 
 and unconsciously directs the action of his muscles ; 
 and the same I'ationale was applied by M. Chevreul 
 to other cases in which this pcndule cxplorateiw (the use 
 of which can be traced back to a very remote date) 
 has been appealed to for answers to questions of very 
 diverse character.^ 
 
 ' See his Kltcr to M Ampere in the Rcvuc dcs Dciix MondeSy 
 Mai, 1833. 
 
 2 Apl>cndix K. 
 
TA BLE- TURNING, SPIRITUALISM. 4 3 
 
 When, however, ' Odylc ' came to the front, and 
 the world of curious but unscientific enquirers was 
 again * possessed ' by the idea of an unknown and 
 mysterious agency, capable of manifesting itself in an 
 unlimited variety of ways, i\\Q pe7idnie cxploratcurwix'^ 
 brought into vogue, under the name of Odometer, by 
 Dr. Herbert Mayo,^ who investigated its action with 
 a great show of scientific precision ; starting, however, 
 with the foregone conclusion that its oscillations were 
 directed by the hypothetical * odyle,' and altogether 
 ignoring the mental participation of the operator, 
 whom he supposed to be as passive as a thermometer 
 or a balance. By a series of elaborate experiments, 
 he convinced himself that the direction and extent of 
 the oscillations could be altered, either by a change 
 in the nature of the substances placed beneath the 
 * odometer,' or by the contact of the hand of a person 
 of the opposite sex, or even of the other hand of the 
 experimenter himself, with that from which it was sus- 
 pended. And he gradually reduced his result to a 
 series of definite laws, which he regarded as having 
 the same constancy as those of Physics or Chemistry. 
 Unfortunately, however, other experimenters, who 
 worked out the enquiry with similar perseverance and 
 good faith, arrived at such different results, that it 
 soon came to be obvious that what Astronomical ob- 
 servers call the 'personal equation' of the individual 
 has a very large share in determining them. A very 
 intelligent medical friend of my own, then residing 
 abroad, wrote me long letters full of the detailed 
 
 ' 0)1 the Trulhs coiilaincd i)i Popular SiiJ^crstitions, 1 85 1. 
 
44 MESMERISM, ODYLISM, 
 
 results of his own enquiries, on which he was anxious 
 for my opinion. ]\Iy reply was simply, " Shut your 
 " eyes, or turn them away ; let some one else watch the 
 " oscillations under the conditions you have specified, 
 " and record their results ; and you will find, if I do not 
 " mistake, that they will then show an entire waJit of 
 " the constancy you have hitherto observed." His next 
 letter informed me that such proved to be the case ; 
 so that he came entirely to agree with me as to the 
 dependence of the previous uniformity of his results 
 on his own * expectancy.' 
 
 A curious variation of the * Odometer' was intro- 
 duced by Mr. Rutter, then manager of the gas-works 
 at Brighton, under the name of * Magnetometer ; * 
 which was simply a gallows-shaped frame, mounted 
 on a solid base, and having a metallic ball suspended 
 from its free extremity. When the finger was kept for 
 a short time in contact with this frame, the ball began 
 to oscillate, usually in some definite direction ; chang- 
 ing that direction with any change of circumstances, 
 after the manner of Dr. Mayo's * odometer.' To many 
 persons, as to Mr. Rutter himself, it appeared impos- 
 sible that these oscillations could have their origin in 
 any movement of the operator ; but everyone who 
 knew how difficult it is to prevent vibrations in the 
 supporting frame-work of a Microscope or a Telescope, 
 and who recognised in the construction of the * Mag- 
 netometer' exactly such an arrangement as enabled 
 the smallest amount of imparted motion to produce 
 the greatest sensible effect, was prepared to anticipate 
 that the oscillations of tlic suspended ball would be 
 
TABLE-TURNING, SPIRITUALISM, 45 
 
 as much maintained and guided by the * expectancy ' 
 of the operator, as they are when it is hung directly 
 from his own finger. Experiment soon proved this to 
 be the case ; for it was found that the constancy of 
 the vibrations entirely depended upon the operator's 
 watching their direction, either by his own eyes or by 
 those of some one else ; and further, that when such a 
 change was made without his knozvlcdge in the condi- 
 tions of the experiment, as ought, theoretically, to 
 alter the direction of the oscillations, no such alteration 
 took place. 
 
 A very amusing expose of the mystery of the 
 * Magnetometer ' resulted from its application by Dr. 
 Madden, a Homoeopathic physician at Brighton, to 
 test the virtues of his * globules,' as to which he had, 
 of course, some pre-formed conclusions of his own. 
 The results of his first experiments entirely corre- 
 sponded with his Ideas of wha£ they ought to be ; for 
 when a globule of one medicine was taken into his 
 disengaged hand, the suspended ball oscillated longi- 
 tudinally ; and when this globule was changed for 
 another of (supposed) opposite virtues, the direction of 
 the oscillations became transverse. Another Homoeo- 
 pathic physician, however, was going through a similar 
 course of experiments ; and his results, while conform- 
 able to his own notions of the virtues of the globules, 
 were by no means accordant with those of Dr. Madden. 
 The latter was thus led to re-investigate the matter 
 with a precaution he had omitted in the first instance ; 
 — namely, that the globules should be placed in his 
 hand by another person, without any hint being given 
 
46 MESMERlSAf, ODVnS.V, 
 
 him of their nature. From the moment he began to 
 work upon tin's pLan, the whole aspect of the subject 
 was changed ; globules that produced longitudinal 
 oscillations at one time, gave transverse at another ; 
 whilst globules of the most opposite remedial virtues 
 gave no sign of difference. And thus he was soon led 
 to the conviction, which he avowed with a candour 
 very creditable to him, that the system he had built 
 up had no better foundation than his own * expect- 
 ancy ' of what the results of each experiment should 
 be ; that anticipation expressing itself unconsciously 
 in involuntary and imperceptible movements of his 
 finger, which communicated a rhythmical vibration to 
 the framework when the oscillations of the ball sus- 
 pended from it were watched. 
 
 Thus, by the investigations of scientific experts 
 who were alive to the sources of fallacy which the in- 
 troduction of the Jiiiman element always brings into 
 play, the hypothesis of Odylic force was proved to be 
 completely baseless ; the phenomena which were sup- 
 posed to indicate its existence being traceable to the 
 Physiological conditions of the Human organisms 
 through whose instrumentality they were manifested. 
 The principle that the state of * expectant attention ' 
 is capable of giving rise either to sensations or to in- 
 voluntary movements, according to the nature of the 
 expectancy, had been previously recognised in Physio- 
 logical science, and was not invented for the occasion ; 
 but the phenomena I have been describing to you are 
 among its most * pregnant instances.' 
 
TABLE-TURNING, SPIRITUALISM. 47 
 
 DIVINING ROD. 
 
 The same principle furnishes what I bch'eve to be 
 the true scientific explanation of the supposed mys- 
 tery of the Divining Rod, often used where water is 
 scarce for the discovery of springs, and in mining dis- 
 tricts for the detection of metallic veins. This rod is 
 a forked twig, shaped like the letter Y, hazel being 
 usually preferred ; and the diviner walks over the 
 ground to be explored, firmly grasping its two prongs 
 with his hands, in such a position that its stem points 
 forwards. After a time the end of the stem points 
 downwards, often, it is said, with a sort of writhing 
 or struggling motion, especially when the fork is tightly 
 grasped ; and sometimes it even turns backwards, so as 
 to point towards, instead of away from, the body of the 
 diviner. Now there is a very large body of apparently 
 reliable testimony, that when the ground has been 
 opened in situations thus indicated, either water- 
 springs or metallic veins have been found beneath ; 
 and it is quite certain that the existence of such a 
 power is a matter of unquestioning faith on the part 
 of large numbers of intelligent persons, who have wit- 
 nessed what they believed to be its genuine manifes- 
 tations.^ This subject, however, was carefully enquired 
 into more than forty years ago by MM. Chevreul and 
 Biot ; and their experimental conclusions anticipated 
 
 ' I have lately received a pamphlet from an Enguieer in the United 
 States, giving most circumstantial details of successes thus obtained 
 within his own experience. 
 
48 MESMERISM, ODVLJSM, 
 
 those to which I was myself led, in ignorance of them, 
 by Physiological reasoning. They found that the 
 forked twig cannot be firmly grasped for a quarter of 
 an hour or more in the regular position, without the 
 induction of a state of muscular tension which at last 
 discharges itself in movement ; and this acts on the 
 prongs of the fork in such a manner, as to cause its 
 stem to point either upwards or downwards or to one 
 side. The occasion of this discharge, and the direc- 
 tion of the movement, are greatly influenced — like the 
 oscillations of bodies suspended from the finger — by 
 the expectancy of the operator ; so that if he has any 
 suspicion or surmise as to the * whereabouts ' of the 
 object of his search, an involuntary and unconscious 
 action of his muscles causes the point of the rod to 
 dip over it. This was admitted even by Dr. H. Mayo, 
 a believer in the existence of an * Od-force ' governing 
 the movements of the rod ; for he found that when 
 his * diviner ' knew which way the fork was expected 
 to move, it invariably answered his expectations ; whilst, 
 when he had the man blindfolded, the results were 
 uncertain and contradictory. Hence he came to the 
 conclusion that several of those in whose hands the 
 Divining Rod moves, set it in motion, and direct its 
 motion (however unintentionally and unconsciously) 
 by the pressure of their fingers, and by carrying their 
 hands near-to or apart-from one another.^ 
 
 Again, since not one individual in forty, in the 
 localities in which the virtues of the Divining Rod are 
 still held as an article of faith, is found to obtain any 
 
 ' Ontlu Truths contained in Popular Superstitions, LeUcr I,, p, 19, 
 
SPIRITUALISM. 49 
 
 results from its use, it becomes obvious that its move- 
 ments must be due, not to any Physical agency 
 directly affecting the rod, but to some influence ex- 
 erted through its holder. And that this influence is his 
 expectation of the result, may, I think, be pretty con- 
 fidently affirmed. For it has been clearly shown, by 
 careful and repeated experiments, that, while the rod 
 dips when the 'diviner' knows or believes he is over 
 a water-spring or a metallic vein, the results are un- 
 certain, contradictory, or simply negative, when he is 
 blindfolded, so as not to be aware precisely where he 
 is. The following is a striking case of this kind, that 
 has been lately brought to my knowledge : — 
 
 "A friend of mine (says Dr. Beard),* an aged 
 clergyman, of thorough integrity and fairness, has for 
 many years — the larger part of his natural life, I be- 
 lieve — enjoyed the reputation of being especially 
 skilled in the finding of places to dig wells, by means 
 of a divining rod of witch hazel, or the fresh branches 
 of apple or other trees. His fame has spread far ; and 
 the accounts that are given by him and of him, are, to 
 those w^ho think human testimony w^orth anything, 
 overwhelmingly convincing. He consented to allow 
 me to experiment with him. I found that only a few 
 moments were required to prove that his fancied gift 
 was a delusion, and could be explained wholly by 
 unconscious muscular motion, the result of expectancy 
 and coincidence. In his own yard there was known 
 to be a stream of water running through a small pipe 
 a few feet below the surface. Marching over and near 
 
 ' Kez'icw of Medicine and Thar macy i^twXoxV), Sept. 1875. 
 
so MESMERISM, ODYLISM, 
 
 tills, the rod continually pointed strongly downwards, 
 and several times turned clear over. These places I 
 marked, blindfolded him, marched him about until he 
 knew not where he was, and took him over the same 
 ground over and over again ; and although the rod 
 went down a number of times, it did not once point to 
 or near the places previously indicated." 
 
 I very well remember having heard, some 35 years 
 ago, from Mr. Dilke (the grandfather of the present 
 Sir Charles) of an experiment of this kind which he 
 had himself made upon a young Portuguese, who had 
 come to him with a letter of introduction, describing 
 the bearer of it as possessing a most remarkable 
 power of finding, by means of the Divining Rod, 
 metals concealed from view. Mr. Dilke's family being 
 at a summer residence in the country, his plate had 
 all been sent to his chambers in the Adelphi, where he 
 was visited by the Portuguese youth ; to whom he 
 said " Go about the room with your rod, and try if you 
 can find any mass of metal." The youth did so ; and 
 his rod dipped over a large standing desk, in which 
 Mr. D.'s plate had been temporarily lodged. Seeing, 
 however, that there were circumstances which might 
 reasonably suggest this guess, Mr. Dilke asked the 
 youth if he was willing to allow his divining power to 
 be tested under conditions which should exclude all 
 such suggestion ; and having received a ready assent, 
 he took his measures accordingly. Taking his plate- 
 box down to his country residence, he secretly buried 
 it just beneath the soil in a newly ploughed field ; 
 selecting a spot which he could identify by cross- 
 
TABLE-TURNING, SPIRITUALISM. 51 
 
 bearings of conspicuous trees, and getting a plough 
 drawn again over its surface, so that the ridges and 
 furrows should correspond precisely with those of the 
 rest of the field. The young diviner was then sum- 
 moned from London, and challenged to find beneath 
 the soil of this field the very same plate which he liad 
 previously detected in Mr. Dilke's deskatthe Adelphi; 
 but having nothing whatever to guide him even to a 
 guess, he was completely at fault. Mr. Dilke's im- 
 pression was that he was not an impostor, but a sincere 
 believer in his own power, as the ' dowsers ' of min- 
 ing districts seem unquestionably to be. — The test of 
 blindfolding the diviner, and then leading him about in 
 different directions so as to put him completely at 
 fault in regard to his locality, is one that can be very 
 readily applied when the diviner is acting in good 
 faith ; but, as I shall show you in the next lecture, it 
 requires very special precautions to blindfold a person 
 who is determined to see ; and in some of the cases 
 which seem to have stood this test, it seems not im- 
 probable that vision was not altogether precluded. 
 
 An additional reason for attributing the action of 
 the Divining Rod to the muscular movements called 
 forth by a state of * expectancy * (perhaps not always 
 consciously entertained) on the part of the performer, 
 seems to me to be furnished by the diversity of the 
 powers that have been attributed to it ; such as that 
 of identifying murderers and indicating the direction 
 of their flight, discovering the lost boundaries of lands, 
 detecting the birth-place and parentage of foundlings, 
 &c. The older writers do not in the least call in 
 
52 MESMERISM, ODYLISM, 
 
 question the reality of the powers of the hazel fork ; 
 but learnedly discuss whether they are due to natural 
 or to diabolic agency. When, in the last century, the 
 phenomena of Electricity and Magnetism became 
 objects of scientific study, but had not yet been com- 
 prehended under the grasp of law, it was natural that 
 those of the Divining Rod should be referred to 
 agencies so convenient, which seemed ready to account 
 for anything otherwise unaccountable. But since Phy- 
 sicists and Physiologists have come to agree that the 
 moving power is furnished by nothing else than the 
 muscles of the diviner, the only question that remains 
 is — what calls forth its exercise .-* And the conclusive 
 evidence I have given you, as to the dependence of 
 the definite oscillations of suspended bodies on in- 
 voluntary movements unconsciously determined by 
 states of expectancy, clearly points to the conclusion 
 that we have in the supposed mystery of the Divining 
 Rod only another case of the same kind. It is well 
 known that persons who are conversant with the 
 Geological structure of a district, are often able to 
 indicate with considerable certainty in what spot, and 
 at what depth, Water will be found ; and men of less 
 scientific knowledge, but of considerable practical ex- 
 perience, frequently arrive at a true conclusion on this 
 point, without being able to assign reasons for their 
 opinions. Exactly the same may be said in regard 
 to the mineral structure of a mining district ; the 
 course of a Metallic vein being often correctly indi- 
 cated by the shrewd guess of an observant workman, 
 where the scientific reasoning of the mining engineer 
 
TABLE-TURNING, SPIRITUALISM. 53 
 
 altogether fails. It is an experience we are continually- 
 encountering in other walks of life, that particular 
 persons are guided,— some apparently by an original, 
 and others by an acquired intuition, — to conclusions 
 for which they can give no adequate reasons, but 
 which subsequent events prove to have been correct ; 
 and I look upon the Divining Rod in its various ap- 
 plications as only a peculiar method of giving expres- 
 sion to results worked out by an Automatic process 
 of this kind, even before they rise to distinct mental 
 Consciousness. Various other methods of Divination 
 that seem to be practised in perfectly good faith — 
 such, for example, as the Bible and key test, used for 
 the discovery of stokn property — are probably to be 
 attributed to the same agency ; the Cerebral traces of 
 past occurrences often supplying materials for the 
 automatic evolution of a result (as they unquestion- 
 ably do in dreams), when the occurrences themselves 
 have been forgotten. 
 
 THOUGHT-READING. 
 
 Many of the cases of so-called ' Thought-reading * 
 are clearly of the same kind ; the communication 
 being made by unconscious muscular action on the 
 part of one person, and automatically interpreted by 
 the other, — as in the following instance. Several 
 persons being assembled, one of them leaves the room, 
 and during his ^ absence some object is hidden. On 
 
 ' The experiment succeeds equally well, or perhaps better, with 
 ladies. 
 
54 MESMERISM, ODYLISM, 
 
 the absentee's re-entrance, two persons who know the 
 hiding-place stand one on either side of him, and 
 estabhsh some personal contact with him ; one method 
 being for each to place a finger on the shoulder next 
 him, while another is for each to place a hand on his 
 body, one on the front and the other on the back. 
 He walks about the room between the two, and 
 generally succeeds before long in finding the hidden 
 object ; being led towards it (as careful observation 
 and experiment have fully proved) by the involuntary 
 muscular action of his unconscious guides, one or the 
 other of them pressing more heavily when the object 
 is on his side, and the finder as involuntarily turning 
 towards that side. 
 
 These and other curious results of recent enquiry, 
 while strictly conformable to Physiological principles, 
 greatly extend our knowledge of the modes in which 
 states of Brain express themselves unconsciously and 
 involuntarily in Muscular action ; and I dwell on them 
 the more, because they seem to me to afford the key 
 (as I shall explain in my second lecture) to some of 
 these phenomena of Spiritualistic divination, which 
 have been most perplexing to many who have come 
 in contact with them, without being disposed to accept 
 the spiritualistic interpretation of them. 
 
 There seems no inherent improbability in the sup- 
 position, that the power of intuitively interpreting the 
 indications involuntarily furnished by expression of 
 countenance, gesture, manner, &c., so as to divine 
 what is passing in the mind of another person, may 
 be greatly intensified in that state of concentration 
 
TABLE-TURMNG, SPIRITUALISM. 55 
 
 which has been already shown (p. 19), to produce a 
 temporary exaltation of other faculties. There can 
 be no question that this divining power is naturally 
 possessed in a very remarkable degree by certain 
 individuals ; and that it may be greatly improved by 
 cultivation,— going in many instances far beyond what 
 can have been learned by experience as to the meaning 
 of the indications on which it rests. But I have not met 
 with any cases, either in my own experience, or in 
 the recorded experiments of such as have proved their 
 competence to conduct them, of the exercise of this 
 power without the intermediation of those expressional 
 signs, which, as in the case I have just cited, are made 
 and interpreted alike unconsciously. 
 
56 MESMERISM, ODYLISM, 
 
 LECTURE 11. 
 
 Several years ago, an eminent Colonial Judge with 
 whom I was discussing the subject on which I am now 
 to address you, said to me, " According to the ordinary 
 '' rules of evidence, by which I am accustomed to be 
 " guided in the administration of justice, I cannot refuse 
 " credit to persons whose honesty and competence 
 " seem beyond doubt, in regard to facts which they de- 
 " clare themselves to have witnessed ; and such is the 
 *' character of a great body of testimony I have received 
 *' in regard to the phenomena of Spiritualism." In ar- 
 guing this matter with my friend at the time, I took 
 my stand upon the fact, well known not only to 
 lawyers but to all men of large experience in affairs, 
 that thoroughly honest and competent witnesses con- 
 tinually differ extremely in their accounts of the very 
 same transaction, according to their mental pre- 
 possessions in regard to it ; and I gave him instances 
 that had occurred within my own experience, in 
 which a prepossession in favour of 'occult' agencies 
 had given origin and currency to statements reported 
 by witnesses whose good faith could not be called in 
 question, which careful enquiry afterwards proved to 
 have no real foundation in fact. 
 
 Subsequent study, however, of the whole subject 
 
TABLE-TURNING, SPIRITUALISAr. 57 
 
 of the validity of Testimony, has led me not only to 
 attach yet greater importance to what Metaphysicians 
 call its 'subjective' element — that is, the state of mind 
 of the witness who gives it ; but, further, to see that 
 we must utterly fail to appreciate the true value of 
 evidence, if we do not take the general experience of 
 intelligent men, embodied in what we term * educated 
 common sense,' as the basis of our estimate. In all 
 ordinary legal procedures, the witnesses on each side 
 depose to things which might have happened ; and in 
 case of a ' conflict of testimony,' the penetration of the 
 presiding judge, and the good sense of the jury, are 
 exerted in trying to find out what really did happen ; 
 their search being guided partly by the relative con- 
 fidence they place in the several witnesses, but partly 
 by the general probabilities of the case. 
 
 Now, it would be at once accepted as a guiding 
 principle by any administrator of justice, that the 
 more extraordinary any assertion — that is, the more 
 widely it departs from ordinary experience — the 
 stronger is the testimony needed to give it a claim on 
 our acceptance as truth ; so that while ordinary evidence 
 may very properly be admitted as adequate proof 
 of any ordinary occurrence, an extraordinary weight 
 of evidence would be rightly required to establish the 
 credibility of any statement that is in itself inherently 
 improbable, the strength of the proof required being 
 proportional to the improbability. And if a statement 
 made by any witness in a Court of Justice should be 
 completely in opposition to the universal experience of 
 Mankind^ as embodied in those Lazvs of Nature luhich 
 
58 MESMERISM, ODYLISM, 
 
 are accepted by all men of ordinary intelligence, the 
 judge and jury would most assuredly put that par- 
 ticular statement ' out of court ' as a thing that could 
 not have happened ; whatever might be the value 
 they would assign to the testimony of the same wit- 
 ness as to ordinary matters. Thus if, in order to 
 account for the signature of a will in London at a 
 certain time, by a person who could be proved, beyond 
 reasonable doubt, to have been in Edinburgh only an 
 hour before, either a single witness, or any number of 
 witnesses, were to affirm that the testator had been 
 carried by ' the spirits ' through the air all the way 
 from Edinburgh to London in that hour, I ask whether 
 the * common sense ' of the whole Court would not 
 revolt at such an assertion, as a thing not in reruin 
 natnra. And yet there are at the present time 
 numbers of educated" men and women, who have so 
 completely surrendered their 'common sense' to a 
 dominant prepossession, as to maintain that any such 
 monstrous fiction ought to be believed, even upon the 
 evidence of a single witness, if that witness be one 
 upon whose testimony we should rely in the ordinary 
 affairs of life ! 
 
 There is, indeed, no other test than that of ' com- 
 mon sense,' for distinguishing between the delusions 
 of a Monomaniac, and the conclusions drawn by sane 
 minds from the same data. There are many persons 
 who are perfectly rational upon every subject but one ; 
 and who, if put on their trial, will stand a searching 
 cross-examination without betraying themselves, es- 
 pecially if they know from previous experience what 
 
TABLE-TURNING, SPIRITUALISM. 59 
 
 it is that they should endeavour to conceal. Rut a 
 questioner who has received the right cue, and skil- 
 fully follows it up, will generally succeed at last in 
 extracting an answer which enables him to turn to 
 the jury and say — " You see that whilst sane enough 
 " in other matters, the patient upon this point is clearly 
 " mad." Yet the proof of such madness consists in 
 nothing else than the absurd discordance between the 
 fixed conviction entertained by the individual, and 
 what is accepted by the world at large as indubitably 
 true ; as, for example, when he declares himself to be 
 one of the persons of the Trinity, or affirms (as in a 
 case now before me) that he is a victim to the machi- 
 nations of infernal powers, whom he overhears to be 
 conspiring against him. We have no other basis than 
 the dictates of 'common sense' for regarding such 
 persons as the subjects of pitiable delusions, and have 
 no other justification for treating them accordingly. 
 Their convictions are perfectly true to themselves ; 
 they maintain in all sincerity that it is only they who 
 are sane, and that the rest of mankind must be mad 
 not to see the matter in the same light ; and all this 
 arises from their having allowed their minds to fall 
 under subjection to some ' dominant idea,' which at 
 last takes full possession of them. Thus, for example, 
 a man suffering under incipient mehincJiolia begins by 
 taking gloomy views of everything that concerns him ; 
 his affairs are all going to ruin ; his family and friends 
 are alienated from him ; the world in general is ' going 
 to the bad.' Under the influence of this morbid 
 colouring, he takes more and more distorted views of 
 
6o MESMERISAJ, ODYLISM, 
 
 the occurrences of his present Hfe, and looks back 
 with exagc^erated reprobation at the errors of his past ; 
 and in time, not only ideal misrepresentations of real 
 occurrences, but ideal eonstnictions having scarcely 
 any or perhaps no basis in actual fact, take full pos- 
 session of his mind, which credits only his own imagin- 
 ings, and refuses to accept the corrections giv^en by 
 the assurances of those who surround him. So I 
 have seen a woman who has had the misfortune to fix 
 her affections upon a man who did not return them, 
 first misinterpret ordinary civilities as expressions of 
 devoted attachment, and then, by constantly dwelling 
 upon her own feelings, mentally construct ideal 
 representations of occurrences which she comes to be- 
 lieve in as real ; not allowing herself to be undeceived, 
 even when the object of her attachment declares that 
 the sayings and doings attributed to him are alto- 
 gether imaginary. 
 
 It is in this way that I account for what appear to 
 me to be the strange delusions, which have laid hold 
 at the present time of a number of persons who are 
 not only perfectly sane and rational upon all other 
 subjects, but may be eminently distinguished by intel- 
 lectual ability. They first surrender themselves, 
 without due enquiry, to a disposition to believe in 
 'occult ' agencies ; and having so surrendered them- 
 selves, they interpret everything in accordance with 
 that belief. The best protection against such sur- 
 render appears to me to be the eai'ly culture of those 
 scientific habits of thought, which shape, when once 
 established, the whole future intellectual course of the 
 individual. 
 
TABLE-TURNING, SPIRITUALISM. 6l 
 
 The case is not really altered by the participation 
 of large numbers of persons in the same delusion ; in 
 fact, the majority sometimes goes mad, the few who 
 retain their 'common sense' being the exceptions. 
 Of this we have a notable instance in the Witch- 
 persecutions of the seventeenth century, mainly insti- 
 gated by King James I. and his Theological allies; who, 
 because ' witchcraft ' and other * curious arts ' are con- 
 demned both by the Mosaic law and by Apostolic 
 authority, * stirred up the people ' against those who 
 were supposed to practise them, and branded every 
 doubter as an atheist. 
 
 The Witch-persecution carried on by James in 
 Scotland, before his accession to the English throne, 
 is believed to have caused the sacrifice of several 
 thousand lives ; but in England, under the too cele- 
 brated Witch Act, which was passed by Parliament 
 under his influence, in the first year of his reign, it 
 was far more terribly destructive. No fewer than 
 seventy thousand persons are believed to have been 
 executed for witchcraft between the years 1603 and 
 1680 ; a number far larger than that of the sufferers 
 in all the religious persecutions of the later Tudors. 
 
 The * History of Human Error' seems to me, in 
 fact, to have no pages more full of instruction to such 
 as can read them aright, than those which chronicle 
 the trials for this offence, which were presided over by 
 judges— like Sir Matthew Hale — of the highest re- 
 pute for learning, uprightness, and humanity. Not 
 only were the most trivial and ridiculous circumstances 
 admitted as proofs of the charge, but the most 
 
62 MESMERISM, ODYLISM, 
 
 monstrous assertions were accepted without the sh"ght- 
 est question. Thus in 1663 a woman was hanged at 
 Taunton, on the evidence of a hunter that a hare which 
 had taken refuge from his pursuit in a bush, was found 
 on the opposite side in the Hkeness of a witch, who, 
 having assumed the form of the animal, took advantage 
 of her hiding-place to resume her proper shape. And 
 the proof of these marvels did not rest on the testi- 
 mony of single witnesses. In 1658 a woman was 
 hung at Chard Assizes for having bewitched a boy of 
 twelve years old, who was seen to rise in the air, and 
 pass some thirty yards over a garden wall ; while at 
 another time he was found in a room with his hands 
 flat against a beam at the top, and his body two or 
 three feet above the floor — nine people at a time seeing 
 him in this position. 
 
 In 1677, however, an able work was published 
 under the title of The Displaying of Supposed Witch- 
 craft, in which the author, Webster, who had seen a 
 great deal of witch-trials, maintained the opinion 
 that the whole system of witchcraft was founded on 
 natural phenomena, credulity, torture, imposture, or 
 delusion ; and a reaction seems then to have begun in 
 favour of * common sense,' which was fostered by the 
 Revolution of 1688. Though accusations continued 
 to be made, the judicious conduct of X-ord Chief 
 Justice Holt, who presided over trials for this offence 
 in various parts of the kingdom, generally caused the 
 acquittal of the prisoners ; and when they were found 
 guilty and condemned, the capital sentence was 
 seldom carried out. The last witch-execution in 
 
TABLE-TURNING, SPIRITUALISM. 63 
 
 Scotland, where the Theological prepossession longest 
 maintained its hold over the public, was in 1722 ; and 
 the Witch Act was repealed in 1736. The belief in 
 witchcraft still survived, however, not only among the 
 iq-norant vulgar, but in the minds of some of the most 
 enlightened men of the last century. We find Addi- 
 son, in the earlier part of it, speaking of witchcraft as 
 a thing that could not reasonably be called in ques- 
 tion ; while, towards its close, Dr. Johnson maintained 
 that as the non-existence of witches could not be 
 proved, there was no sufficient ground for denying their 
 diabolical powers. This is one of the cases, however, 
 in which an enlightened ' common sense ' — the intel- 
 ligent embodiment of the general experience of man- 
 kind — is a much safer guide than logic. The belief in 
 Witchcraft was not killed by discussion, but perished 
 by neglect. The ' childish things ' believed in by our 
 ancestors have been 'put away' by the full-grown 
 sense of the present generation ; the testimony in 
 their favour, once unquestionably accepted as con- 
 vincing, is no longer deemed worthy of being even 
 considered ; and it is only among those of our here- 
 ditarily uneducated population, whose general intel- 
 ligence is about upon a par with that of a Hottentot 
 or an Esquimaux, that ' cunning women ' are able to 
 turn this lingering superstition to the purposes of 
 gain. 
 
 Of the rapid spread of the Witchcraft delusion in 
 a population whose theological ' prepossession ' fa- 
 voured its development, and of its equally rapid 
 decline when 'common sense' resumed its due ascen- 
 
64 MESMERISM, ODYLISM, 
 
 dancy, no case was more remarkable than the 
 Epidemic that spread through Puritan New England, 
 just two hundred years ago. This was initiated by 
 the trial and execution of a poor Irishman, who, being 
 obnoxious as a papist, was accused of having be- 
 witched two children who suffered from convulsive 
 attacks. Dr. Cotton Mather, Eellow of Harvard Col- 
 lege, received one of these children into his house ; 
 and asserted the girl's possession by evil spirits 
 as an indubitable fact, on the following grounds : — 
 She would suddenly, in the presence of a number 
 of spectators, fall into a trance, rise up, place herself 
 in a riding attitude as if setting out for the Sabbath, 
 and hold conversation with invisible beings. When 
 under the influence of ' hellish charms ' she took plea- 
 sure in reading or hearing ' bad ' books, which she was 
 permitted to do with perfect freedom. These books 
 included the Prayer Book of the English Episco- 
 pal Church, the writings of Quakers, and Popish 
 productions. On the other hind, whenever the Bible 
 was taken up, the devil threw her into the most fear- 
 ful convulsions. It was upon such testimony that the 
 unfortunate Irishman was convicted and executetl ! 
 
 The judicial persecution, once begun, soon raged 
 with such severity that its victims were hung by half 
 a dozen or more at a time ; one of them being a min- 
 ister, who had provoked his judges by calling in 
 question the very existence of witchcraft. The accu- 
 sations became more and more numerous, and at last 
 implicated people of the highest consideration, among 
 them the wife of a minister who had been one of the 
 
TABLE-TURNING, STIRITUALISM. 65 
 
 most active promoters of these proceedings ; so that 
 the authorities felt it necessary for their own safety at 
 once to check the further progress of the infection. 
 Judges and juries then found out that they had been 
 'sadly deluded and mistaken,' only Dr. Cotton 
 Mather's father (who was President of Harvard) and 
 other Theologians still holding their ground ; and the 
 release, by the Governor, of a hundred and fifty 
 witches who were under arrest, and the stoppage of 
 proceedings against two hundred more who were 
 about to be arrested, came to be accepted in a short 
 time with general approval, though vehemently pro- 
 tested against by Cotton Mather in these remarkable 
 terms : — " Fleshy people may burlesque these things ; 
 '' but when hundreds of the most solemn people, in a 
 " country where they have as much mother-wit, cer- 
 '* tainly, as the rest of mankind, knoiv them to be true, 
 " nothing but the froward spirit of Sadduceeism can 
 " question them. I have not yet mentioned so much as 
 " one thing that will not be justified, if it be required, 
 " by the oaths of more considerate persons than any 
 " that can ridicule these odd phenomena." 
 
 Now this is precisely the position taken by the 
 modern Spiritualists ; who revive under new forms 
 the doctrines w^hich were supposed to have faded 
 away under the light of Modern Science. The 'hun- 
 dreds of the most solemn people,' who are ready to 
 justify their conviction of such wonders as Mr. 
 Home's and Mrs. Guppy-Volckman's aerial flights, 
 the elongation of the body of the former, or the 
 bringing in of ice, flowers, and fruits by the minister- 
 
66 MESMERISM, ODYLISM, 
 
 ing spirits of the latter, are equally bound to accept 
 the testimony, given on oath and in solemn form of 
 law, which satisfied able judges and honest juries two 
 centuries ago, that tens of thousands of innocent 
 people had entered into the guilty league with Satan, 
 whose punishment was death here and everlasting 
 damnation hereafter. The unbelieving Sadducees of 
 the present time, on the other hand, can appeal to the 
 same sad history, in justification of their refusal to 
 admit the testimony of the votaries of a system which 
 is to their minds quite as absurd and irrational as that 
 of Witchcraft ; and of their disbelief in the reality of 
 alleged occurrences which they deem it an insult to 
 their common sense to be asked to credit. For the 
 faithful few, who two centuries ago rallied round the 
 standard of Rationalism, in antagonism not only to 
 the dead weight of ignorant prejudice, but to the 
 active force of learning and authority, had no other 
 defence of their position than the inJiereitt incredibility 
 of the opposing testimony ; notwithstanding that this 
 was clearly given (in many cases if not in all) in per- 
 fect good faith, and often admitted as true even by 
 the unfortunate victims it incriminated, who seem to 
 have themselves participated in what every person of 
 ordinary intelligence now admits to have been a piti- 
 able delusion. 
 
 But, it may be objected, the acceptance of this 
 test would equally justify a disbelief in any of those 
 marvels which are rightly esteemed the glories of 
 Modern Science. Tell a man, for instance, to whom 
 the fact is new, that the hand may be held without 
 
TABLE-TURNING, SPIRITUALISM. 67 
 
 injury in the stream of liquid iron issuing from the 
 smelting furnace, or dipped and moved about in a 
 bucket of the molten metal ; and he will probably re- 
 ject your assertion as altogether incredible. Yet this 
 statement, while apparently antagonistic to universal 
 experience, can be shown to be really conformable to 
 it. For the protection of the hand from being burned 
 by the hot metal, when the intervention of a film of 
 vapour has been secured by moistening its surface, is 
 just what you may see every day in the rolling off of 
 drops of fluid from a heated iron, in the application of 
 the familiar test by which the laundress judges of 
 the suitability of its temperature. 
 
 Take, again, the case of the Electric Telegraph, 
 and especially that of the Atlantic cable. If sub- 
 marine telegraphy had not been led up to by progres- 
 sive steps, the mass of mankind would have 
 undoubtedly scoffed at the idea of " putting a girdle 
 round the earth in twenty minutes " ; and even after 
 the first Atlantic cable had actually conveyed mes- 
 sages of great importance, to the full satisfaction of 
 those who sent them, there were obstinate sceptics 
 who maintained that its asserted success must be a 
 falsehood, as being opposed to ' common sense.' But 
 every person sufficiently educated to understand the 
 scientific principles of its construction, was perfectly 
 prepared to accept it as a real success ; the speedy 
 failure of the first cable, so far from justifying the 
 original scepticism, only serving to show what the 
 conditions were, by due observance of which perma- 
 nent success might be assured. 
 
68 MESMERISM, ODYLISM, 
 
 Compare this with another curious demand upon 
 pubHc credence — the 'panasilinic telegraph' — which 
 was made by an ingenious hoaxer about the time that 
 the success of land electric telegraphy first set the 
 world to dream of uniting the New World with the Old 
 by the like means. It was gravely announced that a 
 French savant had discovered that if two snails were 
 brought for a time into mutual relation, such a sym- 
 pathy would be established between them, that, how- 
 ever widely they might be separated, the movements 
 of each would correspond with those of the other ; so 
 that if a couple of friends, one in New York and the 
 other in Paris, wished to converse, they had only to 
 provide themselves with an alphabet and figure dial, 
 get a pair of sympathetic snails, and appoint a time 
 for their conversation. The one who led off was to 
 make his snail walk over the dial, and to stop him at 
 the letter or figure he wished to indicate ; his friend's 
 snail would do exactly the same, and thus the mes- 
 sage would be gradually spelled out. — Now I per- 
 fectly well remember that this ridiculous absurdity 
 found many believers. My old friend Dr. Robert 
 Chambers, ever on the watch for scientific novelties, 
 gave currency to the statement in Chanibcrs's Jounialy 
 without, however, committing himself to its truth. 
 And I am sure that its very marvellousness had an 
 attraction for those credulous subjects, who are ready 
 to surrender their common sense to any pretender to 
 occult powers, — the more readily, it often seems, in 
 proportion to the extravagance of his claims. 
 
 I might cite the Spectroscope and the Radiometer 
 
TABLE-TURNING, SPIRITUALISM. 69 
 
 as additional cases, not merely of the read'ness, but of 
 the eagerness of Scientific men, to extend their know- 
 ledge of the agencies of Nature in entirely new 
 directions ; and to accept with implicit confidence, 
 upon adequate evidence, revelations in regard to mat- 
 ters lying so completely beyond the domain covered 
 by previous experience, as entirely to transcend, if 
 not directly to violate it. Now this, in the first case, 
 is because the whole of that wonderful fabric of Spec- 
 trum-analysis, by which we are now enabled to study 
 the chemical and physical constitution of eVery kind 
 of Celestial object which the telescope can render visi- 
 ble to us, has been built up, course by course, on the 
 basis of one of our most familiar scientific experiences 
 —the dark lines that cross the solar spectrum. So, 
 Mr. Crookes's invention of the Radiometer w^as the 
 culmination of a long series of experimental enquiries, 
 the results of which could be demonstrated at any 
 time and to any number of persons ; the fundamental 
 fact of the vanes being driven round by radiant force 
 being thus put beyond dispute. And while, as I 
 stated to you in my previous lecture, what at first 
 seemed the obvious interpretation of this fact — 
 namely, that radiant force here acted in a manner 
 altogether new to science, by direct mechanical im- 
 pulse on the vanes — was almost universally accepted 
 by even the most distinguished Physicists, further 
 investigations of the most ingenious and elaborate 
 nature have now conclusively proved that the action 
 is really an indirect one, capable of being accounted 
 for on previously understood principles. — I hold the 
 
70 MESMERISM, ODYLISM, 
 
 warning given by the history of this enquiry, in regard 
 to the duty of the Scientific man to exhaust every 
 possible mode of accounting for new and strange 
 phenomena, before attributing it to any previously 
 unknown agency, to be one of the most valuable les- 
 sons afforded by Mr. Crookes's discoveries. 
 
 Now I maintain that it requires exactly the same 
 kind of specially trained ability, to elicit the truth in 
 regard to the phenomena we are now considering, as 
 has been exerted in the researches made by the in- 
 strumentality of the Spectroscope and the Radio- 
 meter. And I cannot but believe that if Mr. Crookes 
 had been prepared by a special training in the bodily 
 and mental constitution, abnormal as well as normal, 
 of the Human instruments of the Spiritualistic en- 
 quiries, and had devoted to them the ability, skill, 
 perseverance, and freedom from prepossession, which 
 he has shown in his Physical investigations, he would 
 have arrived at conclusions more akin to those of the 
 great body of scientific men whom I believe to share 
 my own convictions on this subject. 
 
 So far are we from regarding Science as having 
 unveiled all the mysteries of Nature, that we hold 
 ourselves ready to accept any new agency, the evi- 
 dence for which will stand the test of cross-examina- 
 tion by skilled experts. But, in default of such 
 evidence, we are fully justified by experience in re- 
 garding it as more probable that the most honest 
 witnesses have either been intentionally deceived or 
 have deceived themselves, than that assertions in 
 direct contradiction to all the 'natural knowledge' 
 we possess should have any real justification in Hict. 
 
TABLE-TURNING, SPIRITUALISM. 71 
 
 In support of this position, I shall now show you 
 that in every instance (so far as I am aware) in which 
 a thorough investigation has been made into those 
 ' higher phenomena ' of Mesmerism which are adduced 
 in support of SpirituaHsm, the supposed proof has 
 completely failed, generally by the detection of inten- 
 tional fraud ; while as the unexplained marvels of the 
 same kind which are still appealed to as valid proofs, 
 rest on no better evidentiary foundation than seemed 
 originally to be possessed by those which have en- 
 tirely broken down, it may be fairly presumed that 
 they too would be discredited by the like searching 
 enquiry. 
 
 It was in France that the pretensions of Mesmeric 
 clairvoyance were first advanced ; and it was by the 
 French Academy of Medicine, in which the mesmeric 
 state had been previously discussed with reference to 
 the performance of surgical operations, that this new 
 and more extraordinary claim was first carefully 
 sifted; in consequence of the offer made in 1837 by 
 M. Burdin (himself a member of that Academy) of a 
 prize of 3,000 francs to anyone who should be found 
 capable of reading through opaque substances. The 
 money was deposited in the hands of a notary for a 
 period of two years, afterwards extended to three : 
 the announcement was extensively published ; nume- 
 rous cases were offered for examination ; every 
 imaginable concession was made to the competitors, 
 that was compatible with a thorough testing of the 
 reality of the asserted power ; and not one ivas found 
 to stand the trial. 
 
72 MESMERISM, ODYLISM, 
 
 But not only was there complete and ignominious 
 failure ; the fraudulent mode in which the previous 
 successes had been obtained was detected in two of 
 the three cases which were brought most prominently- 
 forward, and was made scarcely less evident in the 
 third. 
 
 The first case was presented by M. Houblier, a 
 physician of Provence, who, after a long period of 
 preparation, sent his clairvoyante Mile. Emelie to 
 Paris, to the care of a (riend and mesmeriser, M. 
 Frappart. This gentleman, before presenting her to 
 the Commissioners, thought it as well to put her 
 asserted power of reading with the back of her head 
 to some preliminary trials ; and soon finding reason 
 to suspect her good faith, he set a trap for her, into 
 which (supposing him to be her friend) she unsus- 
 pectingly fell. Very judiciously, however, he did not 
 immediately expose her, but let her continue her per- 
 formances ; bringing up M. Houblier from Provence 
 to meet other persons interested in the enquiry, that 
 they might see for themselves through the key-hole of 
 the room in which Mile. Emelie was supposed to be 
 lying entranced in a mesmeric sleep, that she got up 
 and examined, here and there, the pages of the book 
 — purposely left in the room — in which her alleged 
 clairvoyant power was to be tested. Of course. Mile. 
 Emelie was never presented to the Commissioners of 
 the Academy ; and M. Houblier confessed with grief 
 and shame that he had not only himself been for 
 four years the dupe of this viaitrcsse fanvic, but that 
 he had unconsciously helped her to impose upon 
 
TABLE-rURNING, SPIRITUALISM. 73 
 
 many most respectable persons in his own neigbour- 
 hood. Now, all these, with M. Houblicr himself, 
 might be presumed to have been both competent and 
 trustworthy witnesses ; so that if M. Burdin's prize 
 had never been offered, this case would have been put 
 on record (like others of which I shall presently tell 
 you) as an unimpeachable attestation of the reality of 
 clairvoyance. Again, the immediate detection of the 
 fraud, not by a hostile sceptic, but by a friendly mes- 
 meriser, shows how easily, under the influence of a 
 ' prepossession,' numbers of intelligent people may be 
 led to surrender their * common sense * to the extent 
 of believing, not only that the seat of vision may be 
 transferred to the back of the head, but that a dis- 
 tinct picture of a page of a book can be formed with- 
 out any optical apparatus. The conduct of M. 
 Frappart in the matter should serve as a lesson to 
 honest Spiritualists at the present time; who, when there 
 is good ground to suspect trickery, would much better 
 serve their own cause by helping to expose it, than by 
 lending themselves to the defence of the trickster. 
 
 Among the earliest claimants of the Burdin prize 
 w^as a M. Pigeaire of Montpellier ; who affirmed that 
 his daughter, a girl eleven years old, Avas able, when 
 her eyes were completely blinded, to read wath the 
 points of her fingers, w^hich then became her visual 
 organs ; the sole condition he required being that she 
 should be blinded by himself with a bandage of black 
 velvet. Her power of reading in this condition was 
 attested by peers, deputies, physicians, distinguished 
 litterateurs (amongst others by George Sand) and 
 
74 
 
 newspaper editors, to whom it had been exhibited in 
 Paris before she was presented to the Commission. 
 But its members were nevertheless sceptical enough 
 to require proof satisfactory to themselves, and de- 
 sired to render the girl ' temporarily blind ' (to use her 
 father's words) by their own method ; objecting that 
 his velvet bandage might be so disarranged by the 
 working of her facial muscles, as to allow her to see 
 downwards beneath its lower edge, when the book 
 was held in a suitable position. M. Pigeaire, how- 
 ever, objecting to this test, the Commissioners having 
 satisfied themselves of the opacity of the bandage, 
 stipulated only that the book should not be put into 
 the girl's hands, to be held by herself wherever she 
 wished, but should be placed opposite her eyes at any 
 distance her father should desire. As he would not 
 consent to this condition, the Commissioners, of 
 course, declined to accept his daughter's performances 
 as furnishing any valid evidence of clairvoyance. 
 Though the bandage was opaque, the trick now be- 
 came transparent ; yet it had taken in peers, deputies, 
 and George Sand ; and only experts in such enquiries 
 succeeded in discovering it. 
 
 The third case was brought forward by M. Teste, 
 a well-known magnetiser of that date, who affirmed 
 that every experienced mesmerist had witnessed the 
 exercise of this faculty at least twenty times. Confi- 
 dent in his position, he offered to submit his clair- 
 voyantc (a young girl) to the cxperimentunt crucis — 
 the reading of print or writing enclosed in opaque 
 boxes ; stipulating only that the direction of the lines 
 
TABLE-TURNING, SPIRITUALISM. 73 
 
 should be previously indicated. Such a box was pre- 
 pared and placed in the girl's hands, with the required 
 indication. Being presently asked by M. Teste 
 whether she would be able to read what was in the 
 interior of the box, she answered Oui ; and on his ask- 
 ing her how soon, she replied confidently dix mimitcs. 
 She then turned the box about in her hands, and in 
 doincT so tore one of the bands that secured it. This 
 being remarked upon, she made no further attempt of 
 the same kind, but continued (as it appeared) to exert 
 herself in fatiguing efforts to discern the concealed 
 lines. Whole hours having thus passed, and M. 
 Teste having asked his clairvoyaiite how many lines 
 there were in the box, she answered deux. He then 
 pressed her to read, and she announced that she saw 
 the word nous, and later the word sommes. As she 
 then declared that she could read no more, the box 
 was taken from her hands, and the girl was dis- 
 missed ; and the box being then opened, the printed 
 slip it contained was shown to M. Teste to have on it 
 six lines of French poetry, in which neither of the 
 words nous sommes occurred. 
 
 Of course this failure does not disprove any of M. 
 Teste's assertions, either in regard to the same girl 
 under other conditions, or in regard to other alleged 
 clairvoy antes ; but it fully justifies the allegation, that 
 as this was a picked case, presented by himself, near 
 the expiration of the third year during which M. Bur- 
 din's prize was open, with unhesitating confidence in 
 the girl's success, his other reported cases, of which 
 not one rests upon better authority than his own, 
 
76 MESMERISM, ODYLISM, 
 
 have not the least claim upon our acceptance. He 
 seems to have been very easily satisfied ; and it is 
 clear that if he was not a consenting party, he was 
 not adequately on his guard against the possibility of 
 a furtive peep being taken by his clairvoyaiite into the 
 interior of the box while it was being turned about in 
 her hands, — the method which Houdin avows himself 
 to have practised in performing his * second sight ' 
 trick, and by which, as I shall presently tell you, one 
 of our own most noted advocates of the * transcen- 
 dental ' was afterwards completely taken in. 
 
 It was in 1844 that '^^ clah'voyant Alexis came 
 hither from Paris, with the reputation of extraordi- 
 nary powers ; and though these had not been sub- 
 mitted to the test of investigation by the French 
 Academy of Medicine, it was confidently affirmed by 
 the leading mesmerisers in this country, that there 
 was nothing in the way of ' lucidity * that this youth 
 had not done and could not do. Not only had he 
 divined the contents of sealed packets and thick 
 wooden boxes, but he could give an exact account oi 
 the contents of any room in any house never before 
 seen or heard of; he had described occurrences taking 
 place at a distance, which, to the great surprise of the 
 questioners (who expected something very different), 
 were afterwards found to have transpired exactly as 
 he had stated ; he had revealed to persons anxious to 
 recover important papers the unknown places of their 
 lodgment ; in fact, if all was true that was affirmed of 
 him, the power for which he could claim credit would 
 have been little less than omniscience — if only it 
 
TABLE-TURNING, SPIRITUALISM, yj 
 
 could have been commanded at will. But, by the 
 admission of his best friends, it was extremely vari- 
 able, coming in gushes or flashes ; while, as he was 
 often unable to see clearly at first, and had an unfor- 
 tunate habit of ' thinking aloud,' he continually made 
 a great many blunders before he arrived at anything 
 like the truth. 
 
 Having myself settled in the neighbourhood of 
 London just as Alexis came over, and having found 
 my friend Dr. Forbes (then editor of the British and 
 Foreign Medical Reviezu) extremely interested m the 
 enquiry into the reality of his asserted elairvoyant 
 powers, I accompanied Dr. F., time after time, to 
 public and private scanees at which these powers were 
 cxJiibited, though not adequately tested. So far from 
 being at that time an opponent, I was much more 
 nearly a believer ; the weight of testimony seemed 
 too strong to be overborne ; and it was only after re- 
 peated experience of the numerous sources of fallacy 
 which the keen-sightedness of Dr. Forbes enabled 
 him to discern, that I became, Hke him, a sceptic as 
 to the reality of Alexis's reputed clairvoyance. Wy 
 scepticism was increased by seeing how, whilst he was 
 * thinking aloud ' (according to his friends) but * fish- 
 ing ' or * pumping ' (according to unbelievers), he was 
 helped by the information he gleaned from the un- 
 conscious promptings of his questioners. And my 
 confidence in testimony was greatly weakened, by 
 finding that extraordinary successes were reported to 
 have been obtained in some cases which Dr. Forbes 
 and I regarded as utter failures, as well as in others 
 
78 MESMERISM, ODYLISM, 
 
 in which it was clear to us that no adequate precau- 
 tions had been taken to prevent the use of ordinary 
 vision. For we satisfied ourselves that when he was 
 going to read or to play cards with his eyes bandaged, 
 it was his habit so to manoeuvre, as to prevent the 
 bandage from being drawn tight, — ccla uietoiiffe being 
 his constant complaint, even when his nostrils were 
 left perfectly free ; and that when he could not see 
 under its lower edge at first, he worked the muscles 
 of his face until he displaced it sufficiently for his 
 purpose. And thus we came to the conclusion that 
 no test of his 'lucidity' could be of any value, which 
 did not involve the reading of print or writing en- 
 closed in perfectly opaque boxes or other envelopes, 
 without the assistance of any response to his guesses. 
 A test-seance of this kind having been arranged by 
 Dr. Forbes at his own house, the general result (as 
 admitted by M. Marcillet, the mesmcriser who accom- 
 panied Alexis) was titter failure ; the only note- 
 worthy exception being in a case in which, having 
 selected the thinnest of the paper envelopes, Alexis 
 correctly stated that the word within it consisted of 
 three letters, without, however, being able to name 
 them. And the value of even this very slight success 
 was afterwards completely neutralised by the disco- 
 very, which I shall recount in connection with the 
 case of the brother and successor of Alexis,'* that 
 nothing else than ordinary vision was required to ob- 
 tain it. 
 
 As M, Marcillet could not dispute the fairness 
 with which the investigation was conducted, he could 
 
TABLE-TURNING, SPIRITUALISM. 79 
 
 offer no other explanation of Alexis's failure on this 
 occasion, than the presence of an 'atmosphere of 
 incredibility ' emanating from the persons of the 
 sceptical doctors present. It may be shrewdly sus- 
 pected, however, that Alexis recognised the presence 
 of a inaitrc homme in clear-sightedness , and felt him- 
 self foiled at every point by the keener intelligence of 
 Dr. Forbes. For he and M. Marcillet forthwith left 
 London for Paris, and never publicly reappeared in this 
 country. 
 
 His place, however, was taken after a year or two 
 by his brother Adolphe, whose powers were highly 
 vaunted by believers as even surpassing those of his 
 predecessor. Again Dr. Forbes applied himself to the 
 investigation ; and again I took every opportunity 
 afforded me of witnessing their exercise. It was at a 
 public seance at which I was myself present, though 
 Dr. Forbes was not, that a circumstance occurred 
 which made at the time considerable impression. 
 Slips of writing-paper having been distributed, any 
 person who wished to put Adolphe's power to the 
 test was desired to write a word at the top of the slip, 
 and then to fold it over and over several times, so that 
 the writing should be covered both in front and be- 
 hind by two or three layers of the paper. Having 
 myself written Paris, I folded it up in the prescribed 
 manner ; my friend Mr. Ottley wrote Toulon ; several 
 other persons did the like ; and we satisfied ourselves, 
 by holding up our folded slips between our eyes and 
 the light, that the writing within was completely in- 
 visible. Yet, taking one of them after another into his 
 
8o MESMERISM, ODYLISM, 
 
 hands, and making no attempt to unfold the papers 
 (some of which, I think, were secured by seal or 
 wafer), Adolphe named, without hesitation, the word 
 written on each. Within a day or two, however, I 
 learned from Mr. Ottley that his sister had discovered 
 that she could read by her natural eyesight the writ- 
 ing on his slip, which it was supposed could only be 
 discovered by clairvoyant power ; and on trying her 
 method upon my own slip, I found myself able to do 
 the same. The secret consisted in holding the slip, 
 not hctzvecn the eye and the light, but in such a posi- 
 tion that the light of the window or lamp should be 
 reflected obliquely from its surface. And any of 
 you will find that after a little practice, words written 
 in a legible but not large hand can be thus read, 
 though covered by three folds of ordinary writing- 
 paper. This discovery fully accounts for various suc- 
 cesses, as well of Alexis and Adolphe, as of other 
 reputed clairvoyants ; and affords a further warning 
 as to the scrupulous care required to exclude all 
 possible sources of fallacy in conducting such trials. 
 
 The conclusions drawn by Dr. Forbes from his 
 critical examination of Adolphe's pretensions, tallied 
 exactly with those to which he had been led by his 
 previous search. All the instances of success could be 
 fairly explained without crediting the performer with 
 any extraordinary powers ; where, on the other hand, 
 due care was taken to render the ordinary operation 
 of the visual sense impossible, failure invariably re- 
 sulted. Thus the claims of Adolphe, like those of 
 Alexis, vanished into thin air at the wand of the ex- 
 
TABLE-TURNING, SPIRITUALISM. 8i 
 
 pert ; and, notwithstanding- the great efforts made to 
 rehabilitate his reputation, he soon found his stay in 
 London no longer profitable, and went the way of his 
 predecessor. Nothing, so far as I am aware, has ever 
 been since heard of this /^r iiobile fratruin ; certainly 
 they never challenged the French Academy of Medi- 
 cine to an investigation of their pretensions. 
 
 Another case of this kind was tested a few years 
 later by Mr. Braid. In 1852 M. Lassaigne and Mdlle. 
 Prudence Bernard, who had gained a great reputation 
 in London by their performances at Hungerford Hall, 
 having come to Manchester, Mr. B. went, at the desire 
 of a friend in Edinburgh, to test the lady's clairvoyant 
 pretensions. The first part of the performance con- 
 sisted of feats which might be readily explained by a 
 system of collusion ; not being so remarkable as those 
 which M. Robin and his female confederate accom- 
 plished by means so simple, that the performer of 
 them could scarcely refrain from laughing at the ease 
 with which the public could be deceived. 
 
 " But now arrived," continued Mr. Braid, *' the ex- 
 periment which I considered by far the most interest- 
 ing of all on the programme, — viz., playing at cards, 
 and reading, w^hen her eyes were to be so securely 
 blindfolded that not a ray of light could reach them, 
 in the common acceptation of the term. To effect 
 this, folds of cotton wadding were placed across the 
 forehead, eyes, and nose, and over the face as far as 
 the point of the nose ; and then a white handkerchief 
 folded several times, so as to be about 2\ inches wide, 
 was bound round the head and eyes, so as to main- 
 
82 lilESMERISM, ODYLISM, 
 
 tain the cotton in its place. This done, M. Lassaigne 
 triumphantly asked anyone to examine his subject, 
 and say whether it was possible for her to see through 
 all this apparatus. Some one having exclaimed 
 * No,' the lady sat down at a table to challenge any 
 one present to play a game at cards with her. Whilst 
 they were making arrangements for the game, I was 
 sufficiently clairvoyant, even without being mesme- 
 rised, to observe the lady pensively lay her face 
 upon her hands, so as to enable her very conveniently, 
 and by mere accident no doubt, to give the proper twist 
 and finish to the apparatus for excluding light from 
 her eyes. I observed this manceuvre by the lady 
 tzi'icCy and called the attention of some friends to it, 
 who can also testify to the fact. The clairvoyante 
 now became very lively ; described the personal ap- 
 pearance of her opponent, played dexterously, and 
 beat him. She also did the same by another gentle- 
 man who tried a round with her ; and with a third 
 gentleman, a friend of my own, who, by my sugges- 
 tion, had taken a nrcv pack of cards with him, she 
 proved her power of describing his personal appear- 
 ance correctly, and playing well, but she lost on this 
 occasion from having bad cards. 
 
 " As the lady was now considered to have proved 
 her clairvoyant powers to the satisfaction of all pre- 
 sent, I stepped forward and announced my desire to 
 have the privilege of applying a test which would be 
 far more satisfactory to my mind, because I had no con- 
 fidence in the supposed efficacy of the blindfolding 
 then in use for effectually accomplishing what it pro- 
 
TABLE-TURNING, SPIRITUALIS}!. 83- 
 
 fessed to do. I told the audience that I felt convinced 
 that the patient was seeing through interstices be- 
 tween the cotton and the face, near the side of the 
 nose. My proposal for guarding against such a 
 source of fallacy as this, was simply to place a thin 
 sheet of brown cardboard under her chin and round 
 her neck, so as to guard against the possibility of the 
 deception which I suspected. This I intended to 
 have accomplished by tying the sheet of pasteboard 
 around her neck, proceeding from the bottom of the 
 throat upwards in a conical form, after the fashion of 
 the Elizabethan frill, extending considerably higher 
 than the head, so as to prevent the possibility of her 
 raising her hands or lowering her head sufficiently for 
 seeing over it, without exciting the attention of the 
 audience. Indeed, whoever had had the opportunity 
 of observing the clairvoyante, as I did, during this 
 card scene, must have felt that he would be permit- 
 ting an insult to be perpetrated upon himself and upon 
 the whole audience, were he not to endeavour to ex- 
 pose what appeared to me to be such an absurd farce. 
 I was aware that my test would be objected to, on the 
 ground that she did not profess to read through card- 
 board (although I must confess my surprise that a 
 person who can see and read through stone or brick 
 walls, should not be competent to -penetrate through 
 thin cardboard), so I, therefore, offered to remove 
 that objection, 'by cutting out a piece of the card- 
 board and covering the hole with the cotton wadding 
 and folded handkerchief which sJie actually professed 
 to see through; but, although the auaience were 
 
84 MESMERISM, ODYLISM, 
 
 almost unanimous in their opinion that my proposed 
 test was a fair one, and such as they wished to see 
 tried, M. Lassaigne well knew that it was too certain 
 and obvious a mode of testing to answer his purpose, 
 and, therefore, under various pretexts, and in a most 
 rucie manner, he absolutely refused to try it. I there- 
 fore withdrew from the platform and left the room, feel- 
 ing the force of the remark, — ' Ex nno disce omnes'. "^ 
 
 And so it always proves in the end with these 
 sham marvels ; which, however specious they may 
 appear at a distance, vanish under critical investiga- 
 tion like the mirage of the desert on nearer approach. 
 The real marvels of Science, on the other hand, not 
 only stand the test of the most critical examination, 
 but prove more marvellous the more thoroughly they 
 are investigated. Reason, it has well been said, can 
 guide where Imagination scarcely dares to follow. 
 And those who desire to find a true spring at which 
 to slack their thirst for knowledge, need only follow 
 the guidance of the Spectroscope and the Radio- 
 meter, to be led to wonders of which neither the 
 * Poughkeepsie Seer,' the * Seeress of Prevorst,' nor 
 any other of the reputed * prophets ' of Mesmerism or 
 Spiritualism had ever dreamed. • 
 
 My anxiety to impress on you the lessons which (as 
 it seems to me) such exposures ought to afford in re- 
 gard to the object of our present enquiry, leads me to 
 ask your further attention to two other cases ; in each 
 of which a number of apparent successes of a most 
 remarkable kind were obtained by what was subse- 
 
 ' See Braid on Magic, Witchcraft, Aiiivial Magn tism, Hyptiotism, 
 and Electro- /yiology, 1852; p. 115. 
 
TA BLE- TURNING, SPIRI TUA L ISM. 8 5 
 
 quently shown to have been an ingenious fraud, prac- 
 tised upon the honest patron of the performer, who 
 was (hke M. Houblier) his unsuspecting dupe. 
 
 In the course of his further search for clairvoyance, 
 Dr. Forbes was requested by a legal gentleman whom 
 he calls Mr. A. B., to witness the performances of a 
 copying clerk in his employ, by name George Goble ; 
 whom he stated to be capable, in a large proportion 
 of cases, of reading printed words enclosed in opaque 
 boxes, without either mistake or preliminary guessing. 
 Being at that time in the country, I did not accom- 
 pany Dr. Forbes in his repeated visits to Mr. A. B.'s 
 chambers ; but I well remember his writing to me in 
 some excitement after the first of them, that at last 
 he seemed to have got hold of a genuine case of clair- 
 voyance. He soon, however, recovered his equanimity 
 and his scepticism ; and felt that he must make a much 
 more thorough enquiry, before he could be justified in 
 accepting the case as genuine. George's ' dodge ' con- 
 sisted (as was subsequently proved) in furtively open- 
 ing the box or other envelope, so as to get a peep at 
 its contents, whilst sitting or lying face-downwards on 
 a sofa ; and in managing to conceal his having done 
 so, by tearing open the box at the moment he pro- 
 claimed the word : his failures occurring when the box 
 was so secured that he could not succeed in opening 
 it, after manoeuvring (it might be) for half an hour or 
 more. Finding that in every one of George's successes 
 the envelope migJit have been opened, whilst all the 
 cases in which the boxes had certainly not been opened 
 were complete failures —-d. consideration which, though 
 
86 MESMERISM, ODYLISM, 
 
 very obvious, seemed never to have suggested itself to 
 the legal mind of George's patron — Dr. Forbes and 
 Professor Sharpey (whom he had taken into council) 
 devised a simple ' counter-dodge,' by which it should 
 be rendered impossible for George to open the box for 
 the purpose of reading the contained word, without 
 the detection of his trick. This entirely succeeded ; 
 George w^as brought upon his knees and confessed his 
 roguery, but protested that it was his first offence. 
 You would scarcely credit the fact if it had not been 
 self-recorded, that George's patron still continued to 
 believe in his clairvoyant power ; accepting his assur- 
 ance that he had only had recourse to trickery when 
 the genuine power failed him, and requesting Dr. 
 Forbes to give him another trial. This Dr. F. con- 
 sented to make, upon the sole condition that a small 
 scaled box, containing a single word printed in large 
 type, should be returned to him luiopcned with the 
 word written upon the outside of it. Some days 
 elapsed before George's * lucidity ' recovered from the 
 shock of the exposure ; but his master then informed 
 Dr. F. that he had read the word IMPLEMENTS, or, as 
 he spelled it, impclnients, with great assurance of cor- 
 rectness. This, however, proving altogether wrong, 
 the box was left in Mr. A. B.'s hands for a further 
 space of two months ; and no second guess having been 
 then made, the real word was disclosed by Dr. F. to 
 be OBJECTIONS. 
 
 The history of this enquiry, as detailed by Dr. 
 Forbes,^ brings into the strongest contrast the patient 
 
 ' Illustrations of Modern lilcsmcrism from Personal Investigation, 
 London (Churchill) 1845, Third Series, pp. 63 89. 
 
TABLE-TURNING, SPIRITUALISM. 87 
 
 and honest search for truth of the cautious sceptic, 
 wilHn^ to be convinced if satisfactory evidence could 
 be adduced, and the easy credulity of the enthusiastic 
 disciple, who not only eagerly accepted a conclusion 
 opposed to universal experience, without taking any 
 adequate precautions against trickery, but held to that 
 conclusion after the trick had been not only exposed 
 but confessed. And here, again, we see how, but for 
 the interposition of a sceptical ' expert,' a case of sham 
 clairvoyance would have been published to the world 
 with the same unhesitating affirmation of its genuine- 
 ness, as that which now claims credit for the exercise 
 of * Psychic Force ' in causing accordions to play, and 
 heavy tables to turn round or even to rise in the air, 
 without muscular agency.^ 
 
 In the other case I have now to mention — that of 
 Mr. Hewes' 'Jack,' publicly exhibited at Manchester 
 about the same time that Alexis was performing in 
 London — the proof of clairvoyance, as shown in read- 
 ing when the eyes had been effectually closed, seemed 
 as complete as it was possible to obtain. Jack's eye- 
 lids were bound down by surgeons of that town (who 
 were assuredly not confederates) with strips of adhe- 
 sive plaster, over which were placed folds of leather, 
 which again were kept in place by other plasters ; the 
 only condition made by Mr. Hewes being that the 
 ridges of the eyebrows should not be covered, as it 
 was there that Jack saw. when Mucid.' The results 
 were truly surprising ; there was no guessing, no need 
 of prompting, no failure ; ' Jack ' read off, without the 
 
 • See Serjeant Cox's letter in the Spectator, Nov. 11, iS;6, 
 
88 MESMERISM, ODVLISM, 
 
 least hesitation, everything that was presented to him. 
 The local newspapers were full of this new wonder ; 
 and no documentary testimony in favour of clairiwy- 
 ancc could possibly be more conclusive. But, as usual, 
 the marvel would not stand the test of close examin- 
 ation. A young Manchester surgeon, who had been 
 experimenting upon himself, gave a public exhibition 
 of his power of reading when his eyes had been * made 
 up ' in precisely the same manner as ' Jack's,' and by 
 the same gentlemen ; the means he adopted being 
 simply to work the muscles of his face, until he so far 
 loosened the plasters as to obtain a crevice through 
 which he could read by looking upwards. Mr. Hewes, 
 who witnessed this performance, readily agreed that 
 * Jack ' should be further tested ; and it was settled, en 
 petite comite, that after protecting his eyelashes with 
 narrow strips of plaster, his eyelids should be covered 
 with a thick coating of shoemaker's wax, leaving the 
 superciliary ridges free. When this was done (not 
 without considerable resistance on the part of 'Jack,' 
 only kept under by the influence of his patron) the 
 claii'voyant power was completely annihilated ; but one 
 thing 'Jack' plainly saw, even with his eyes shut — 
 that Miis little game was up.' His patron, a gentle- 
 man of independent fortune, who had become an 
 active propagandist of the belief he had honestly em- 
 braced, returned all the money which had been received 
 for 'Jack's' performances, and 'Jack ' withdrew into 
 private life. 
 
 Now I readily concede that neither the detection 
 of ' Jack ' and George Goble, nor the failure of Alexis 
 
TABLE-TURNING, SPIRITUALISM. 89 
 
 and Adolphe under test-conditions, disproves the reality 
 of clairvoyance; but my position is, that since the 
 choicest examples of its manifestation are found to 
 break down when thoroughly investigated, not one of 
 the reported instances in which no such thorough in- 
 vestigation has been made, has the least claim to be 
 accepted as genuine. It must, I think, have become 
 abundantly obvious to you, that until the existence of 
 the clairvoyant power shall have been established be- 
 yond question, by every test that the skill of the most 
 wary and inveterate sceptic can devise, the scientific 
 expert is fully justified in refusing to accept the 
 testimony of any number of witnesses, however 
 honest, but of no special intelligence in regard to the 
 subject of the enquiry, as to particular instances of 
 this power. George Goble's master would have re- 
 counted the performances of his protege in perfect 
 good faith, and would have been very angry with 
 anyone who should express a doubt either of his 
 veracity or his competence. And not only Mr. 
 Hewes, but a large body -of lookers-on, would have 
 stoutly contended for the impossibility of * Jack ' 
 having read with his eyes, when they had been care- 
 fully covered by a surgeon with plasters and leather. 
 But to me it seems the ' common sense ' view of the 
 matter, that the fact of 'Jack' having read with his 
 eyes covered, should have been accepted as a proof — 
 not of his clairvoyance — but of his eyes not having 
 been ejfectnally covered ; and that the very fact of 
 George Goble having found out the words in certain 
 boxes which he might have opened, while he did not 
 
90 MESMEKIS.\f, ODYLISM, 
 
 find out any in the boxes lie could not open, should 
 have been accepted as valid evidence — not of his 
 clairvoyance — but of his having taken a furtive peep 
 with his natural eyes into the unsecured boxes. And 
 in each case, 'common sense' would have been justi- 
 fied by the result. 
 
 The ordinary rules of Evidence, as I have en- 
 deavoured to show you, apply only to ordinary oc- 
 currences. To establish the reality of such an extra- 
 ordinary condition as clairvoyance, extraordinary 
 evidence is required ; and it is the entire absence of 
 this, which vitiates the whole body of testimony put 
 forward by Prof Gregory {Letters on Animal Magne- 
 tism), doubtless in the most complete good faith, 
 regarding the performances of Major Buckley's clair- 
 voyantes ; whom he states to have collectively read 
 the mottoes enclosed in 4,860 nut-shells (one of them 
 consisting of 98 words), and upwards of 36,000 words 
 on papers enclosed in boxes, one of these papers con- 
 taining 371 words. Now, that Professor Gregory lent 
 not only himself, but the awthority of his public posi- 
 tion, with reprehensible facility, to the attestation of 
 Major Buckley's statements, might be fairly antici- 
 pated from his eager endorsement of Reichenbach's 
 doctrines, and his credulous acceptance of Mr. 
 Lewis's claims, of which I spoke in my previous lec- 
 ture ; and the complete untrustworthiness of his 
 statements in regard to clairvoyance becomes obvious 
 to any sceptical reader of his * Letters.' For not 
 only is there an entire absence of detail, in regard to 
 the precautions taken to prevent the ingenious tricks, 
 
TABLE-TURNING, SPIRITUAIJS}r. 91 
 
 to which (as all previous experience had indicated) 
 the claimants to this power are accustomed to have 
 recourse ; but the narrative of one of his cases shows 
 such an easy credulity on the very face of it, as at 
 once to deprive his other statements of the least claim 
 to credence. I refer to that {pp. cit., p. 364) in which 
 folded papers or sealed envelopes were forwarded to 
 the clairvoy antes, who returned them — the seals ap- 
 parently unbroken — with a correct statement of the 
 contained words. Now the unsealing of sealed let- 
 ters, and the resealing them so as to conceal their 
 having been opened, are practised on occasion in the 
 Post-office of probably every Continental capital, if 
 not in our own ; and, as some of you have probably 
 seen in the public prints, the doings in this line of a 
 ' medium ' who professed to be able to return answers 
 under spiritual influence to questions contained in 
 sealed letters, have lately been exposed in the Law- 
 courts of New York ; the medium's own wife disclosing 
 the manner in which the unsealing and resealing of 
 these letters were efl"ected. Common sense, it might 
 have been thought, would dictate that if the contents 
 of a sealed letter had been made known by a person 
 in whose possession it had lain, that letter had been 
 opened and resealed. Yet Prof. Gregory prefers to 
 believe that these letters had been read by clairvoy- 
 ance ; and numbers of persons in various parts of 
 the Union, including many of high social considera- 
 tion, were found to have placed such confidence in the 
 * spiritual ' pretensions of the New York swindler, as 
 to submit to him questions of the most private 
 
93 MESMERISM, ODVLISM, 
 
 nature, with fees that gave him an annual income of 
 more than a thousand pounds ! 
 
 It was to put the value of Professor Gregory's 
 evidence in support of clairvoyance to the test, that 
 his colleague, Dr. (afterwards Sir James) Simpson, 
 offered a bank-note of large value, enclosed in a 
 sealed box and placed in the hands of a public 
 official in Edinburgh, as a prize to anyone who could 
 read its number ; and I am informed by Sir Dominic 
 Corrigan, M.P., that Sir Philip Crampton (Surgeon to 
 the Queen in Ireland) did the like in Dublin. Though 
 these rich prizes remained open to all comers for at 
 least a year, none of Major Buckley's one hundred 
 and forty-eight clairvoyantcs succeeded in establishing 
 a claim to either of them ; in fact, I believe that not 
 even a single attempt was made. And yet there are 
 even now men of high scientific distinction, w^ho 
 adduce Professor Gregory's testimony on this subject 
 as unimpeachable ! ^ 
 
 Still more akin to the powers claimed for Spirit- 
 
 ' It was publicly suggested by Mr. Vv'^allace at the Glasgow Meet- 
 ing of the British Association, that the failure of the clairvoya7ites in 
 the case of Dr. Simpson's bank-note might be due to there having been 
 really no note placed in the box. This suggestion I indignantly 
 repudiated at the time, as an unworthy imputation upon the character of 
 a public man whose honesty was above all suspicion. But I might 
 have replied that if the fact had been so, some of Major Buckley's 148 
 clairvoyantcs ought to have found it out. Dr. Simpson informed me 
 that Dr. Gregory, on being asked the reason of their complete absten- 
 tion, could give no other account of it, than that the very ofTcr of the 
 reward, by introducing a selfish motive for the exercise of this power, 
 prevented its access ; as if Alexis, Adolphe, and numerous other 
 professors of the art of reading without eyes, had not been daily 
 practising it for the j)iirp(jsc of pecuniary gain. 
 
TABLE-TURXING, SPIRITUALISM, 93 
 
 ualistic * mediums,' is that form of alleged Mesmeric 
 claii'voyaiicc which consists in the vision of scenes or 
 occurrences at a distance ; so that they are described 
 exactly as they are at the time, and not according to 
 the expectation of the questioners. Numerous cases 
 of this kind have been very circumstantially recorded ; 
 and I most freely admit that a body of thoroughl)^ 
 >vell-attested and well-sifted evidence in their favour 
 would present a strong claim to acceptance. Every 
 one knows, however, that plenty of marvels of the 
 same class have been current as * ghost stories ; ' and 
 that even some of what were regarded as the best 
 attested of these, have faded out of the credit they 
 once enjoyed, under the advancing light of a healthy 
 rationalism. And while such as have a * transcen- 
 dental ' turn of mind will accept the most w^onderful 
 story of clairvoyance at a distance with little or no 
 hesitation, those of a more sceptical habit will admit 
 none that has not been subjected to the test of a 
 searching cross-examination ; thinking it more pro- 
 bable that some latent fallacy is concealed beneath 
 the ostensible facts, than that anything so marvellous 
 should have really happened. 
 
 My own attention was very early drawn to this 
 subject by certain occurrences which fell under my 
 immediate observation. A Mesmeric * somnambule ' 
 said to be possessed of this power of * mental travelling ' 
 being the subject of a seance at my own house, and 
 being directed to describe what she saw in the rooms 
 above, gave a correct and unhesitating reply as to the 
 occupants of my nursery ; whilst in regard to the 
 
94 MESMERISM, ODYLISM, 
 
 very unusual contents of a store-room at the top of 
 the house, she was entirely at fault, until I purposely 
 prompted her by leading questions. The next day I 
 found out that she had enjoyed ample previous op- 
 portunities of information as to the points which she 
 had described correctly ; whilst it soon came to my 
 knowledge that a most circumstantial narrative was 
 current in Bristol (where I then resided) of her extra- 
 ordinary success in discerning in the store-room ' the 
 very objects which she had entirely failed to see. 
 Here, then, was a marked instance of two sources of 
 fallacy in narratives of this description : first, the dis- 
 position to attribute to ' occult ' agencies what may 
 be readily explained by natural causes ; and second, 
 the * myth- making ' tendency — far more general than 
 is commonly supposed — which, as I have already 
 shown you, builds up the most elaborate construc- 
 tions of fiction upon the slenderest foundation of 
 fact. 
 
 In my interviews with Alexis and Adolphe, also, 
 both of whom were reputed to possess a very high 
 degree of this power, I tested them as to the contents 
 of my house, which they described in a vague and 
 general way that would apply to almost any ordinary 
 domicile. But both of them spoke of my drawing- 
 room as having pictures on its walls, which was not 
 then the fact ; and neither of them, though pressed as 
 to something very conspicuous which they could not 
 help seeing, gave the least hint of the presence of an 
 organ with gilt pipes. Their failure with me does 
 not, of course, invalidate any real successes they may 
 
TABLE-TURNING, SPIRTTUALISM. 95 
 
 have gained with others ; but my previous experience 
 had led me to entertain grave doubts as to the reaHty 
 of the reputed successes ; and these doubts were sub- 
 sequently strengthened by the complete breakdown, 
 under the persevering and sagacious enquiries prose- 
 cuted by Dr. Forbes, of a most notable case which 
 excited great public interest at that time. 
 
 The wonderful performances of Miss Martineau's 
 servant J., which she announced to the public in 1844, 
 through the medium of the AtJiencsiimj culminated in 
 a detailed description — given by J. in the mesmeric 
 sleep — of the particulars of the wreck of a vessel of 
 which her cousin was one of the crew, as also of the 
 previous loss of a boy overboard ; with which particu- 
 lars it was positively affirmed by Miss Martineau, and 
 believed by many on her authority, that the girl 
 could not possibly have been previously informed, as 
 her aunt had only brought the account to the house 
 when the seance was nearly terminated. On being 
 asked, says Miss M., two evenings afterwards, when 
 again in the sleep, "whether she knew what she 
 " related by seeing her aunt telling the people 
 " below," J. replied " No ; I saw the place and the 
 " people themselves — like a vision." And Miss 
 Martineau believed her. 
 
 My sceptical friend, Dr. Forbes, however, would 
 not pin his faith to hers ; and determined to institute, 
 through a Medical friend on the spot, a more search- 
 ing investigation than Miss Martineau had thought 
 necessary. The result of this enquiry was to prove, 
 unequivocally, that J.'s aunt had told the whole story 
 
96 xMESMERISAf, ODYLISM, 
 
 to her sister, in whose house Miss M. was residing 
 about three Jioiirs before the seance ; and that, though 
 J. was not then in the room, the circumstances were 
 fully discussed in her presence before she was sum- 
 moned to the mesmeric performance.^ — Thus not only 
 was J. completely discredited as a seer; but the value 
 of all testimony to such marvels was seriously 
 lowered, w'hen so honest and intelligent a witness as 
 Harriet Martineau could be so completely led astray 
 by her ' prepossession,' as to put forth statements as 
 facts, which w^ere at once upset by the careful en- 
 quiry which she ought to have made before commit- 
 ting herself to them. 
 
 It is the wise rule of our law, that no Evidence 
 (save that of dying declarations) is admissible in 
 Court, that is not capable of being tested by cross- 
 examination ; and no well-trained investigator will 
 put forth a new discovery in Science, until he has 
 verified it by * putting it to the question ' in every 
 mode he can think of 
 
 If, in the case I have just cited, the * common 
 sense ' view had been taken from the beginning, 
 the correspondence of J.'s circumstantial narrative 
 with the actual facts of the case, w^ould have been 
 accepted as proving — not that she had received them 
 in Mesmeric vision — but that she had learned them 
 through some ordinary channel ; and the truth of this 
 conclusion would have at once become apparent, when 
 the proper means were taken to verify it. The same 
 
 ' Illnstratious of I\roii<:m Mcsnu-risni^ pp. 91— loi. 
 
TABLE-TURNING, SPIRITUALISM. 97 
 
 ground should (I contend) be taken in regard to all 
 the marvels of this class which rest on the testimony 
 of believers only. For no one of them is better at- 
 tested than that which I have just cited ; and until 
 the evidence in support of any case of clairvoyance 
 can be shown to have been sifted in the same thorough 
 manner, I maintain that it has no more claim on our 
 acceptance, than has the specious ' opening ' of a case 
 in a Court of Law, before it has been subjected to the 
 hostile scrutiny of the counsel on the other "side. 
 
 TABLE-TURNING AND TABLE-TALKING. 
 
 I need not detain you long with the scientific dis- 
 cussion of the phenomena of Table-turning and Tabic- 
 talking) since no facts have been established in re- 
 gard to them, which are not susceptible of a very 
 simple explanation. A number of persons seat them- 
 selves round a table, and place their hands upon it, 
 with a preconceived idea that the table will turn ; and 
 after some time, it may be, during which the move- 
 ment has been attentively waited for, the rotation 
 begins. If the parties retain their seats, the turning 
 only takes place as far as the length of their arms 
 allows, but not unfrequently they all rise, feeling 
 themselves obliged (as they assert) \.o folloiv \}i\(t table; 
 and, from a walk, their pace may be accelerated to a 
 run, until the table actually spins round so fast that 
 they can no longer keep up w^ith it. And since this 
 happens, not merely without consciousness on the 
 part of the performers that they are exercising any 
 
98 MESMERISAf, ODVLISM, 
 
 force of their own, but for the most part under the 
 full conviction that they do not ; — and, moreover, as 
 tables thus move, which the performers declare them- 
 selves unable to move to the same extent by any 
 voluntary effort ; — it is not unnatural that they should 
 conclude that some other foixe than their own Mus- 
 cular action must have put it in motion. 
 
 But the man of science, whether Physicist or Phy- 
 siologist, cannot rest content without adequate proof 
 of this conclusion ; and a test is very easily applied. 
 You see here a little apparatus consisting of two 
 pieces of board, two cedar pencils, two india-rubber 
 bands, two pins, and a slender index-rod, which was 
 devised by Faraday to ascertain whether the table 
 ev^er. moves round without a lateral pressure froni the 
 hands of the operators. For this ' indicator ' is so 
 constructed, that when the hands are placed upon 
 it, instead of resting immediately on the table, any 
 lateral pressure exerted by them makes the upper 
 board roll upon the lower ; and the slightest move- 
 ment of this kind is so magnified by the leverage of 
 the index, as to show itself by a very decided motion 
 of its point in the opposite direction. By this simple 
 test, anyone may experimentally satisfy himself that 
 the table never goes round unless the index of the 
 * indicator ' shows that lateral muscular pressure is 
 being exerted in the direction of its movement ; and, 
 conversely, that when such lateral pressure, as shown 
 by the * indicator,' is being adequately exerted, the 
 table moves round. The Physicist, therefore, has a 
 right to assert, that, until a table shall be found to 
 turn ivitJiout lateral pressure of the hands laid upon 
 
rABLE-TURNING, SriKITUALISXf. 99 
 
 the * indicator,' as shown by the fixity of its index, 
 there is no evidence whatever of the exertion of any 
 otJicr foree than the Mnsciclar action of the operators. 
 And the Physiologist, who is famihar with the fact 
 that every human being is continually putting forth a 
 vast amount of muscular energy, of the exercise of 
 which he is entirely unconscious, and who has also 
 studied that unconscious influence of mental precon- 
 ception of which I have already given you illustra- 
 tions in the pendnle exploratctir, at once perceives that 
 the absence of any consciousness of exertion on the 
 part of the operators, affords no proof whatever that 
 it is not being put forth ; while he is further well 
 aware that involuntary muscular contractions are often 
 far more powerful than any which the zvill can excite. 
 The same explanation applies to the tilting of the 
 table, which is made in response to questions asked 
 of * the spirits ' by v/hich it is supposed to be in- 
 fluenced. Nothing but a strange prepossession- in 
 favour of some 'occult' agency, can attribute such 
 tilting to anything but the dozvmvard pressure of the 
 hands laid upon it; the hypothetic exertion of any 
 other force being scientifically inadmissible, until it 
 shall have been experimentally shown that the table 
 tilts without being manually pressed down. An * indi- 
 cator ' might be easily constructed, which should test 
 dowmvard pressure, on the same principle that Fara- 
 day's indicator tests lateral pressure ; but no one, so 
 far as I am aware, has ever ventured to affirm that he 
 has thus demonstrated the absence of muscular pres- 
 sure, although I long since pointed out that only in 
 
loo MESMERISM, ODYLISM, 
 
 this manner could the matter be scientifically tested. 
 Until such demonstrations shall have been given, the 
 tilting — like the turning— of tables, may be unhesita- 
 tingly attributed to the unconscious muscular action 
 of the operators ; while the answers which are brought 
 out by its instrumentality may be show^n to be the ex- 
 pressions, either (like the movements of the pcndiile 
 cxploj-atejir) of ideas actually present to the mind of 
 one or other of the performers ; or (as often occurs in 
 Somnambulism and other allied states) of past ideas 
 which have left their traces in the brain, although they 
 have dropped out of the conscious memory. 
 
 That such is the nature of the responses ordinarily 
 obtained by those who (in entire good faith) have 
 practised this ' curious art ' in any of its varied forms 
 — Including planchette-writing — is shown by the 
 analysis of a number of cases observed by myself 
 and recorded by others.^ And there is this very 
 curious indication of it : that when the ' table-talking * 
 epidemic first spread in this country, a number of 
 Low-church Clergymen, strongly imbued with the 
 belief that it was a manifestation of Satanic agency, put 
 to the tables a series of what they regarded as * test ' 
 questions, and got just the answers they expected.^ 
 
 SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 I now come to the existing phase of the Epidemic 
 
 belief in the ' occult,' which, as I have already pointed 
 
 out, differs from the preceding rather in its outward 
 
 manifestations than in its essential nature. You have 
 
 ' Appendix L. ' Appendix M. 
 
TABLE-TURXING, SPIRITUALISM. loi 
 
 all heard of the ghostly visitations, which, in the cla}'s 
 of our ancestors, were reputed to have disclosed by 
 means of raps the places in which treasure had been 
 hidden, or a murdered corpse had been buried. Ghosts, 
 however, like witchcraft, seem to have lost credit with 
 the present generation, until brought into vogue again 
 as * spirits ' by the Rochester rappings. A family of 
 the name of Fox, including two girls aged respectively 
 about nine and eleven years, went to inhabit a house at 
 Hydesville (Rochester County, New York State), in 
 which a murder -was said to have been committed 
 many years before. They had not resided in it long, 
 w^hen raps were heard in the girls' chamber ; some- 
 times obviously issuing from their persons, but some- 
 times apparently proceeding from other parts of the 
 room. Curiosity was excited ; the neighbourhood 
 flocked to witness the marvel ; no one could detect 
 any movement on the part of either of the girls while 
 the raps w^ere sounding ; and no concealed instrument- 
 ality could be discovered by careful search. The rap- 
 pings soon began to show a certain coherence ; a code 
 of signals was arranged, according to which one rap 
 was to mean no, three raps j^'i", and two raps doubtful 
 or wait ; and communications having been thus opened 
 with the rappers, visitors were enabled, through the 
 medium of these two girls, to summon and interrogate 
 the * spirits ' of their departed friends. Multitudes now 
 hocked from all parts to witness the phenomena ; and 
 the girls having gone to live with an elder married 
 sister at Rochester-town, the alphabetical system was 
 established at her suggestion ; which enabled the 
 
I02 MESMERISM, ODVLISM, 
 
 * spirits * to spell out their messages by rapping at the 
 required letters, when either the alphabet was repeated 
 by the enquirer, or the letters on an alphabet-card 
 were successively pointed to. The excitement con- 
 tinuing to increase, a Committee of Investigation was 
 appointed by a town-meeting. Every opportunity was 
 given for the enquiry ; but the committee Avas com- 
 pletely baffled. The enquiry was taken up, however, 
 by an eminent anatomist, Dr. Austin Flint, of New 
 York ; who, having first convinced himself that the 
 sounds issued from the legs or feet of the girls them- 
 selves, notwithstanding their apparent stillness, sought 
 for a physiological explanation of them ; and soon 
 found one in the power which certain persons can 
 acquire, of giving a jerking or snapping action to parti- 
 cular tendons of either the knees, ankles, or toes, — 
 a patient of his ow^n being able thus to produce an 
 exact imitation of the Rochester rappings. Dr. Austin 
 Flint's -explanation subsequently received full confir- 
 mation from Professor Schiff, since of Florence, who 
 not only himself acquired the power of producing the 
 raps, by the repeated displacement of a tendon which 
 slides through a sheath behind the external protube- 
 rance of the ankle, but exhibited this acquirement to 
 the French Academy of Medicine in April, 1859, 
 baring his legs, and producing the raps without any 
 apparent movement. And not more than six years 
 ago, Mrs. Culver, a female relative of the Fox family, 
 made a deposition before the magistrates of the town 
 in which she resided ; ' stating that while visiting the 
 
 ' Appendix N. 
 
TABLE-TCRXIXG, SPIRITUALISM. 103 
 
 girls at Rochester many years before, she had be- 
 come acquainted with the entire secret, which she 
 'fully disclosed ; and herself reproducing the raps in 
 verification of her narrative. 
 
 But the very rationality of this explanation caused 
 it to be disbelieved by such as were anxious to be 
 placed in communication with * the spirit world.' The 
 fame of the Fox girls spread through the United States ; 
 they established themselves as * mediums ' in New 
 York ; and before long they were drawing a large 
 income from the pockets of their credulous visitors. 
 
 Under the fostering influence of pecuniary temp- 
 tation, imitators of the Fox girls soon sprang up in 
 various parts of the United States; 'mediums' 
 became numerous ; and one of them, Mrs. Hayden, 
 brought the contagion to this country, where the 
 * spirit-rapping ' Epidemic rapidly spread. The manner 
 in which, according to the experience of those w^ho 
 witnessed Mrs. Hayden's performances (subsequently 
 confirmed by Mrs. Culver), the ' medium ' divined at 
 what letters to make the raps, was very simple ; con- 
 sisting merely in carefully watching the countenance 
 or gestures of the questioner, who almost invariably 
 gives, in some way or other, involuntary expression to 
 his or her expectancy. Of this I could cite many 
 proofs. An eminent scientific friend told me that 
 having been at a party by one member of which after 
 another Mrs. Hayden's powers were tested, he was 
 at first greatly surprised at the accuracy of the replies 
 he obtained regarding the name, date of death, and 
 
I04 MESMERISM, ODYLISM, 
 
 place of death, of a deceased friend of whom he was 
 thinking ; but that he soon obtained a clue, by observ- 
 ing that her success varied with the demonstrativeness 
 of the individual, and that she utterly failed with one 
 of peculiarly imperturbable habit. He then made a 
 fresh trial, with the fixed predetermination to withhold 
 any manifestation of his expectancy ; and Mrs. Hay- 
 den was completely baffled. The secret was divined 
 also by Professor Edward Forbes, who, by pausing on 
 particular letters, made Mrs. Hayden spell 'Lord 
 Tomnoddy ' and other waggeries. And the most com- 
 plete exposure of the trick was given by Mr. G. H. K. 
 Lewes ; who caused Mrs. Hayden to rap out the most 
 absurd replies to questions which he had previously 
 written down and communicated to another member 
 of the party ; finally obtaining, in answer to the ques- 
 tion ' Is Mrs. Hayden an impostor .? ' three unhesitat- 
 ing raps at the letters Y, E, S.^ 
 
 In the 'Report on Spiritualism of the Committee 
 of the London Dialectical Society/ you will find that 
 Dr. Edmunds, the chairman of that Committee, not 
 only detected a well-known professional * medium ' in 
 making the raps with her foot, but observed that she 
 regulated her raps by intently watching the questioner, 
 and that when she was prevented from doing this by 
 the interposition of a screen, her raps were altogether 
 
 » Mr. Wallace cxjilains this result by assuming that the raps were 
 caused by 'invisible beings,' who, reading what was in the questioner's 
 mind, answered a fool according to his folly. Where the folly lies, the 
 readers of Mr. Wallace's letter [Appendix 0) will judge for themselves. 
 
TABLE-TURMNG, SPIRITUALISM. 105 
 
 meaningless. Myown experience with other 'mediums' 
 has been to exactly the same effect.* 
 
 Of the ' higher phenomena * of Spiritualism — the 
 
 * levitation ' of chairs and tables, and even of men and 
 women; the 'elongation' of Mr. Home's body, his 
 handling of heated bodies, and his heaping hot coals 
 on the head of a bald gentleman without any discom- 
 fort to him ; the untying of knots and change of coats ; 
 the production of 'spiritual photographs ;' the bring- 
 ing-in of fruits, flowers, or live lobsters, in dark seances ; 
 and the like — I have left myself no time to speak. 
 The very catalogue speaks, to any sober and unpre- 
 possessed mind, of the extreme improbability that any 
 
 * spiritual ' agents should so manifest their presence. 
 And in regard to the spirit-writing by pens or pencils, 
 I can only say that of the revelations given by its 
 means, I have seen none that could claim any higher 
 character than that of unmitigated ' twaddle.' It is 
 because the present generation knows little of the 
 history of former Epidemics of this kind, and is there- 
 fore not in a position to profit by the experience they 
 have afforded, that I have rather dwelt in these lec- 
 
 ' Appendix P. — Much stress is laid by the Editor of the ^/tY/^j-/^;-, 
 and by Mr. Wallace, upon a statement made by the late Professor Ue 
 Morgan, that Mrs. Hayden's success was «<?/ interfered with by the inter- 
 position of a screen. But I have it on the authority of an eminent Scientific 
 colleague of Professor De Morgan's, who was repeatedly present at the 
 spiritualistic seances held at his house, that the experiments were 
 habitually conducted there in so loose a manner as to be altogether 
 unsatisfactory ; frauds of the most transparent kind (which my friend him- 
 self more than once exposed) being accepted as valid proofs ; and non- 
 natural interpretations being always preferred, when natural explana- 
 tions were obvious. 
 
io6 MESMERISM, ODYLISM, 
 
 turcs on the lessons of the past in regard to the credi- 
 bility of testimony on these subjects, than discussed 
 the truth or falsehood of statements now in currency 
 in regard to the recent doings of ' the spirits.' It is 
 not because I have not investigated Spiritualism for 
 myself, that I refrain from bringing before you in 
 detail the results of my own enquiries. At the out- 
 break of the Epidemic I devoted to the examination 
 of its pretensions an amount of time and attention 
 which might have been far more profitably employed ; 
 and I did not give up the enquiry until I had satis- 
 fied myself, by long and careful study, that its char- 
 acter was fundamentally the same with that of the 
 epidemics I had previously witnessed, differing only 
 in the particular form of its manifestations. I could not 
 afford to sacrifice the time that might be much more 
 profitably spent in adding to our stock of real know- 
 ledge, in the (so-called) scientific investigation of such 
 performances as those of the * Davenport Brothers ; ' 
 when I found that the investigation was to be so 
 carried on, that I should be precluded from using 
 either my eyes or my hands, the most important in- 
 struments of scientific enquiry. I felt assured that 
 these performances would turn out to be mere con- 
 juring tricks : and that they really are so has been 
 shown, not merely by Mr. Maskelyne's discovery of 
 the secret, and his repetition of the performances as 
 conjuring tricks, but by the recent public expose of the 
 whole method, in Boston (N.E.), by one who formerly 
 practised it for gain. So, again, in other cases in which 
 I strongly suspected the supposed * spiritualistic ' 
 
TABLE-TURNING, SPIIUTUALISM. 107 
 
 manifestations to be intentional deceptions, and pro- 
 posed their repetition under test-conditions admitted 
 to be fair, I waited hour after hour for the manifesta- 
 tions, the non-production of which was attributed to 
 my ' atmosphere of incredulity.' 
 
 Thus, having accompanied a scientific friend to a 
 Spiritualistic seance^ at which we saw a small light 
 table dance up and down under the hands of a pro- 
 fessional ' medium ' (Mrs. M.) as she moved across the 
 room, I pointed out to my friend, who regarded this 
 as an example of ' spiritual ' agency, that since the 
 ' medium ' wore a large crinoline which completely 
 concealed her feet, it was quite possible for her to have 
 lifted the table upon one foot, while moving across 
 the room on the other — as any opera- dancer could do. 
 My friend, candidly admitting the possibility of this 
 explanation, subsequently invited me to a j-^w/r^at his 
 own house, with a non-professional ' medium ; ' and 
 asked me if I was satisfied with the ' crinoline-guard ' 
 of wire and paper which he had so placed round the 
 legs of a small table, that the ' medium ' could not lift 
 the table on her foot without breaking through the 
 ' guard.' I replied that I was perfectly satisfied ; and 
 that if I should see the table dance up and down 
 under his * medium's ' hands, in the same manner as 
 under Mrs. M.'s, I should admit that it was a case for 
 further investigation. During a seance of two hours, 
 however, no other manifestation took place than ' raps,' 
 indicating the presence of 'spirits;' the interposition 
 of the 'crinoline-guard' apparently keeping them 
 away from the table.' 
 
 ' Since the delivery of this Lecture, Mr. A. K. Wallace lias pub- 
 
 
io8 MESMERISM, ODYLISM, 
 
 In regard to professional ' mediums ' who make 
 their living by the exercise of their supposed gifts, I 
 came to the conclusion that we have as much right to 
 assume fraud until the contrary shall have been proved, 
 as we have in the case of a gipsy fortune-teller, who 
 has managed to learn a good deal about the chief 
 people of the country neighbourhood into which she 
 comes, before she allows herself to be consulted, and 
 then astonishes her credulous clients by the know- 
 ledge of their affairs which she displays. I need not 
 tell you how one after another of such pretenders has 
 been detected in England. In Paris the frauds of a 
 ' spiritual ' Photographic establishment were brought 
 into the law courts, and the persons concerned in them 
 sentenced to severe punishment, a year or two ago. 
 And in America, the ' Katie King' imposture, which 
 had deluded some of the leading spiritualists in this 
 country, as well as in the United States, was publicly 
 exposed at about the same time. 
 
 But, it is affirmed, such exposures prove nothing 
 against the genuineness of any new manifestation. 
 I quite admit this. But I affirm that to anyone ac- 
 customed to weigh the value of evidence, the fact that 
 the testimony in favour of a whole series of antecedent 
 claims has been completely upset, seriously invali- 
 dates (as I have shown in regard to Mesmeric clair- 
 voyancc) the trustworthiness of the testimony in favour 
 of any new claimant to ' occult ' powers. Why should 
 
 licly avowed himself to be the 'scientific friend ' to whom I referred ; 
 and has stated that on subsequent occasions the table ^Z/V/ rise within the 
 ' crinoline guard.' lias it ever done so, I ask, in the presence of a 
 sceptical expert ? 
 
TABLE-TURNING, SPIRITUALISM. 109 
 
 I believe the testimony of any believer in the fjenuine- 
 ness of D's performances, when he has been obHged 
 to admit that he has been egregiously deceived in 
 the cases of A, B, and C ? 
 
 The case is not essentially different in regard to 
 ' mediums ' who do not practise for gain. For it is 
 perfectly well known to those who have had adequate 
 opportunities of observation, that there is a class of 
 persons (especially, I am sorry to have to say, of the 
 female sex) who have an extraordinary proclivity to 
 deceit, even from a very early period of life ; and who 
 enjoy nothing better than * taking-in ' older and wiser 
 people, even when doing so brings no special advan- 
 tage to themselves.^ Every Medical practitioner of 
 large experience has met with cases in which young 
 ladies have imposed in this way, by feigning disease, 
 not only upon their families, but upon their previous 
 doctors ; the supposed patients sometimes undergoing 
 very severe -treatment for its cure. And when the 
 new attendant has sagaciously found out the cheat, 
 and has honestly exposed it to the parents, he is in 
 general ' morally ' kicked out of the house for his un- 
 founded aspersion ; — not every one having the good 
 
 ' Thus Mr, Braid gives {Magic, Witchcraft, ^c, p. 117) the case 
 of a boy who got credit in his own town for clah-voyant power ; being 
 able to read, play cards, &c., when the upper part of his face was 
 covered with a mask of nine folds of silk stuffed with cotton-wool. 
 Hundreds of respectable people were ready to attest the fact ; but when 
 the precaution suggested by Mr. Braid — of guarding against interspaces 
 near the nose — was put in practice, the trick was made apparent, as in 
 the case of xMadlle. Pigeaire (p. 74). Mr. Braid was requested not to 
 make any public exposure of the cheat ; " because the boy's father was 
 '* such a respectable man, being one of the Town-Council." ' 
 
Tio MESMERISM, ODYLISM, 
 
 fortune of my old friend Dr. A. T. Thompson, who 
 was sent for some years afterwards by a young married 
 lady to attend her family, on account of the high 
 opinion she had formed of his ability, as the only one 
 of the many doctors formerly consulted about her, 
 who had found out the real nature of her case. I 
 could tell you the particulars, in my possession, of the 
 detection of the imposture practised by one of the 
 most noteworthy of these Lady-mediums, in the distri- 
 bution of flowers which she averred to be brought-in 
 by the * spirits ' in a dark seance, fresh from the garden, 
 and wet with the dew of heaven ; these flowers having 
 really been previously collected in a basin upstairs, 
 and watered out of a decanter standing by, — as was 
 proved by the fact, that an inquisitive sceptic having 
 furtively introduced into the water of the decanter a 
 small quantity of a nearly colourless salt (ferrocyanide 
 of potassium), its presence in the * dew ' of the flowers 
 was afterwards recognised by the appropriate chemical 
 test (a per-salt of iron) which brought out 'prussian 
 blue.' 
 
 In other instances, again, I have witnessed the most 
 extraordinary j^//'-deception : which, as in the Mes- 
 meric performances, invested occurrences which could 
 be readily accounted for on * natural ' principles, with 
 a ' supernatural ' character ; often through the omission 
 of some essential fact, which is entirely ignored by the 
 narrator. Thus I was seriously informed, during the 
 Table-turning epidemic, that a table had been moved 
 round by the will of a gentleman sitting at a distance 
 from it ; but it came out upon cross-examination, that 
 
TABLE-TURNING, SPIRITUALISM, iii 
 
 a number of hands were laid upon it in the usual way, 
 and that after the performers had sat for some time in 
 silent expectation, the operator called upon ' the spirit 
 of Samson ' to move the table, which then obediently 
 went round. — Sometimes the essential fact, under the 
 influence of this proclivity, completely passes out of 
 the mind of the narrator ; as in the instance of a lady, 
 cited by Miss Cobbe in her paper on the ' Fallacies of 
 Memory,' who assured Miss C. that a table in her 
 drawing-room had some years before correctly rapped 
 out her age in the presence of several persons, none of 
 ivhoni were near the table ; the fact being impressed on 
 her mind by her annoyance at the disclosure, which 
 was so great that she sold the table ! Having assured 
 Miss Cobbe that' she could verify her statement by 
 reference to notes made at the time, she subsequently 
 corrected it, very honestly, by telling Miss C. that she 
 found that there ivere hands on the table. — So, I have 
 been recently requested by a gentleman to go and see 
 a light table made heavy at the will of a person stand- 
 ing apart from it ; a table which could be ordinarily 
 lifted on a single finger, requiring the strength of the 
 hands to raise it when so commanded. Thinking that 
 this might be a trick of the kind that Houdin played 
 upon the Arabs by means of an electro-magnet, I 
 made some preliminary enquiries with a view to satisfy 
 myself wliether the phenomenon was to be thus ac- 
 counted lor ; and finding that it was not, I was about 
 to go to witness it, when I received a letter from the 
 brother of my correspondent, who told me that he 
 thought I ought to know the real conditions of the 
 
112 MESMERISM, ODYLISM, 
 
 performance ; which were that, the hands of two of the 
 operator's family being first laid upon the table, the 
 table was upset and lay on the floor on its side ; and 
 that then, their hands still pressing sideways upon the 
 top of the table, it could be made light or heavy by 
 the will of the operator at a distance, a single finger 
 being able to raise it up in the once case, while the 
 whole hand was required in the other. And thus, as 
 in the case of * the spirit of Samson,' it became evi- 
 dent that the will of the operator was exercised in 
 regulating the pressure of the hands in contact with 
 the table, there being no evidence whatever of any 
 alteration in its actual weight. 
 
 One potent source of this self-deception, I find in 
 the state of expectancy that results from prolonged 
 and repeated seances ; in which, by mere continued 
 monotony of impression, the mind tends towards a 
 state in which the will and discrimination are sus- 
 pended, and the expected phenomenon (such as the 
 rising of a table in the air) takes place subjectively, — 
 that is, in the belief of the person or persons who re- 
 port it — without any objective reality. Of this mental 
 condition an admirable description was given by Mr. 
 Braid,^ on the basis of his own investigations, before 
 ' Spiritualism ' became epidemic in this country ; its 
 existence is not, therefore, a hypothesis invented ad hoc. 
 Sceptical enquirers, like myself, are continually told : — 
 " You must not form your negative conclusions from 
 " one or two failures ; but you must persevere in your 
 " enquiries until you get positive results." This is just 
 
113 
 
 like John Wesley's advice to a young preacher, who 
 was lamenting his want of ' faith/ and asking his 
 advice as to continuing in the ministry : — " Preach 
 ."faith tiilyow have it, and then you will preach it be- 
 " cause you have it." Spiritualistic disciples are bidden 
 to sit hour after hour, and day after day, until they 
 pass into the state of mind in which they can be 
 brought to believe anything they have been led to 
 expect ; and thenceforth they rail at scientific 
 sceptics for not abnegating their intellectual discrimi- 
 nation, by submitting themselves to a process which 
 dethrones their higher powers from their normal supre- 
 macy, and leaves their imaginations free scope. 
 
 I have thus endeavoured to set before you what a 
 long sequence of experiences seems to me to teach in 
 regard to this subject ; namely, that w^e should rather 
 trust to the evidence of our se7tse, than to that of our 
 senses. That the latter is liable to many fallacies, we 
 are almost daily finding out. If we go to see the 
 performances of a Conjuror, we see things which we 
 know to be impossibilities ; and that knowledge 
 makes us aware that they cannot really happen as 
 they seem to happen. Thus every conjuror can pour 
 out scores of glasses of different kinds of wine from a 
 single bottle ; or can tumble a great pile of bouquets 
 out of a single hat ; but we know that he must do 
 this from some larger store, which he dexterously 
 conceals from our view. So, the celebrated conjuror 
 Bosco seemed even to those who were closely watching 
 him within a very short distance, to convert a living 
 
114 MESMERISM, ODYLISM, 
 
 hare into two living rabbits ; the movements by 
 which he made the exchange from a bag behind him, 
 being so extraordinarily rapid as to elude the obser- 
 vation of the bystanders, whose attention he fixed 
 (the great secret alike of conjurors and professional 
 ' mediums ') upon something else. And I conclude, 
 therefore, as I began, with the affirmation that we 
 have a right to reject the testimony of the most truth- 
 ful and honest witnesses, as to asserted phenomena 
 which are as much opposed to the * Laws of Nature ' 
 as the transport of a human being through the air, 
 the conversion of an old woman into a hare (or vice 
 versa), or the change of a hare into two rabbits ; until 
 the facts of the case shall have been so thoroughly 
 sifted by the investigation of * sceptical experts * as to 
 present an irresistible claim on our belief. In every 
 case within my knowledge, in which such investiga- 
 tion has been made, its fallacies have become ap- 
 parent ; and when, therefore, I receive narratives fro'm 
 persons quite credible in regard to ordinary matters, as 
 to extraordinary occurrences which have taken place 
 within their knowledge, I think myself justified in 
 telling them plainly that their conviction cannot 
 govern my belief, because both theory and experi- 
 ence have led me to the conclusion that no amount of 
 testimony is good for anything, which is given by 
 persons * possessed ' with a * dominant idea ' in regard 
 to the subject of it, and which has not been tested by 
 severe cross-examination. 
 
 As I wrote twenty-three years ago : — " In all ages 
 the possession of men's minds by dominant ideas has 
 
TABLE-TURNING, SPIRITUALISM. 115 
 
 " been most complete, when these ideas have been rcli- 
 '' gioiis aberrations. The origin of such aberrations has 
 " uniformly lain in the preference given to the feelings 
 " over the judgment, in the inordinate indulgence of 
 " emotional excitement without adequate control on 
 " the part of the rational will. Those who are thus 
 ** affected place themselves beyond the pale of any ap- 
 " peals to their reasoning faculty, and lead others into 
 " the same position. They are no more to be argued 
 " with, than are insane patients. They cannot accept 
 ** any proposition which they fancy to be in the least 
 " inconsistent with their prepossessions ; and the evi- 
 " dence of 'their own feelings is to them the highest 
 " attainable truth." ^ 
 
 Many of the victims of these delusions have be- 
 come the subjects of actual Insanity ; which has been 
 attributed by believers to ' a spirit having entered in 
 and taken possession.' What kind of spirits they are 
 which thus take possession of credulous and excitable 
 minds, I hope that I have now made sufficiently 
 plain : they are Dominant Ideas. 
 
 ' Quarterly Rez'iew, October 1853. — A sensible CIerg}-nian has lately 
 written in almost the same words, in regard to the ' dominant ideas ' 
 by which his ultra-ritualistic brethren are at present possessed. "I 
 "know well (says ' Clericus,' Times, Dec. 29, 1876) that when men have 
 " once committed themselves to a false principle or theory, it becomes a 
 " monomania with them for a time ; and those who on all other points 
 " are reasonable and capable of forming just conclusions, become utterly 
 •'blind and illogical, so that arginiient with them is hopeless." 
 
APPENDICES. 
 
 APPENDIX A. 
 
 MAGIC AND DEMONIACAL AGENCY AT THE CHRISTIAN ERA. 
 
 " For many years before this time, and for many years 
 after, impostors from the East, pretending to magical powers, 
 had great influence over the Roman mind. All the Greek 
 and Roman Hterature of the empire, from Horace to Lucian, 
 abounds in proof of the prevalent credulity of this sceptical 
 period. Unbelief, when it has become conscious of its 
 weakness, is often glad to give its hand to superstition. The 
 faith of educated Romans was utterly gone. We can hardly 
 wonder, when the East was thrown open — the land of mys- 
 tery — the fountain of the earliest migrations — the cradle of 
 the earliest religions — that the imagination both of the 
 populace and the aristocracy of Rome became fanatically 
 excited, and that they greedily welcomed the most absurd 
 and degrading superstitions. Not only was the metropolis 
 of the empire crowded with hungry Greeks, but Syrian for- 
 tune-tellers flocked into all the haunts of public amusement. 
 Every part of the East contributed its share to the general 
 superstition. The gods of Egypt and Phrygia found un- 
 failing votaries. Before the close of the republic, the temples 
 of Isis and Serapis had been more than once erected, des- 
 
ii8 APPENDIX A. 
 
 troyed and renewed. Josephiis tells us that certain disgrace- 
 ful priests of Isis were crucified at Rome by the second 
 emperor ; but this punishment was only a momentary check 
 to their sway over the Roman mind. The more remote dis- 
 tricts of Asia Minor sent their itinerant soothsayers ; Syria 
 sent her music and her medicines ; Chaldcea her Babylonian 
 numbers and mathematical calculations. To these corrupters 
 of the people of Romulus we must add one more Asiatic 
 nation— the nation of the Israelites ;— and it is an instructive 
 employment to observe that, while some members of the 
 Jewish people were rising, by the Divine power, to the 
 highest position ever occupied by men on earth, others were 
 sinking themselves, and others along with them, to the lowest 
 and most contemptible degradation."— Conybeare and How- 
 son's Life of St. Paul, vol. i. p. 158. 
 
 The reputation of Simon Magus of Samaria stood so 
 high in Rome, alike with the Senate and the people, that he 
 was even adored as a god ; a statue being raised to him in 
 the island of the Tiber, with the inscription, Siinoni Deo 
 Saiicto. Several of the early Christian Fathers who speak 
 of this inscription, fully admit the reality of Simon's mira- 
 culous powers, as shown in his making statues which walked 
 at his command in the midst of a crowd thunderstruck with 
 wonder and fright ; his remaining unhurt in the midst of the 
 flames of a burning pile ; his changing stones into bread ; 
 his making a scythe mow without hands, and the like:— some 
 of them merely protesting against his being credited with 
 the attribute of Divinity, whilst others affirm that it was only 
 after having failed to obtain these powers from the Apostles 
 by the offer of money, that he gained them by allying him- 
 self with Demons. Apollonius of Thyana was another cele- 
 brated magician of the first century, who figures much in the 
 wriungs of the eariy fathers as an opponent of the Christ- 
 ians, to whom he did all the mischief he could by his 
 diabolical arts ; in which these Fathers believed as firmly as 
 
APPENDIX n. 119 
 
 they did in those of Simon Magus. There is a singular 
 passage in TertuUian (Apologies, chap, xxiii.), which refers 
 to magicians who could bring up phantoms, evoke the spirits 
 of the dead, force the mouths of infants to utter oracles, and 
 make chairs and tables prophesy by means of ' circles ' or 
 chains formed by the joined hands of several individuals — 
 exactly after the manner of- modern Spiritualists. If 'the 
 spirits ' are powerful enough, argues TertuUian, to do these 
 things at the orders of others, what must they be able to 
 effect when working with redoubled zeal on their own ac- 
 count ? Against these he sets two Christian miracles which 
 occurred within his own knowledge ; the first, of a corpse, 
 at its own funeral, raising and clasping its hands in the usual 
 attitude of supplication at the first word of the priest in 
 prayer, and then replacing them at its sides when the prayer 
 was over ; and the second, of a Christian corpse long dead 
 and buried, which, on its grave being. re-opened for the ad- 
 mission of a recently defunct, courteously moved to one 
 side to make room for the new-comer ! These statements, 
 doubtless made in all honesty and good faith, curiously illus- 
 trate that influence of ' dominant ideas ' over an intellect 
 powerful, subtle, and profound in many respects, but totally 
 destitute of scientific discrimination, which it is the object 
 of these Lectures to elucidate. 
 
 APPENDIX B. 
 
 FLAGELLANT MANLA.. 
 
 The private practice of individual flagellation, as an act 
 of self-mortification, was common among religious communi- 
 ties from an early period of Christianity ; but it was not until 
 the thirteenth century, when a general belief prevailed that 
 
I20 APPENDIX B. 
 
 the end of the world was at hand, that regular associations 
 and fraternities were formed for its public performance, and 
 that the mania spread epidemically over a large part of 
 Europe. Of the Dcvoti of Italy in the year 1260, we are 
 told by a contemporary historian that " noble and ignoble, 
 old and young, and even children of five years of age, 
 marched through the streets with no covering but a scarf 
 round the waist They each carried a scourge of leathern 
 thongs, which they applied to their limbs, amid sighs and 
 tears, with such violence that the blood flowed from the 
 wounds. Not only during the day, but even by night, and 
 in the severest winter, they traversed the cities with burning 
 torches and banners in thousands and tens of thousands, 
 headed by their priests, and prostrated, themselves before 
 the altars. They proceeded in the same manner in the 
 villages ; and the woods and mountains resounded with the 
 voices of those whose cries were raised to God. The melan- 
 choly chaunt of the penitent alone was heard. Enemies 
 were reconciled ; men and women vied with each other in 
 splendid works of charity, as if they dreaded that Divine 
 Omnipotence would pronounce on them the doom of anni- 
 hilation." (Monachus Paduanus, in Hecker's Epidemics of 
 the Middle Ages, translated by Dr. Babington for the Syden- 
 ham Society, p. 36.) 
 
 It was in the middle of the fourteenth century (1347-1350) 
 that Europe was devastated by the Black Death, a most malig- 
 nant form of the Oriental Plague, which is believed to have 
 carried off o^ie fourth of its entire population ; and under 
 the terror inspired by this visitation the flagellant Mania, 
 which had previously almost entirely abated, broke out with 
 new fury, apparently in many places at once ; and the ex- 
 cesses of this fanaticism became even more violent than 
 before. But though it prevailed over nearly the whole of 
 Continental Europe, this Mania does not seem to have be- 
 come epidemic in Britain. We are told by Stow that a band 
 
APPENDIX B. 121 
 
 of Flagellants reached London in the reign of Edward III., 
 their number consisting of 120 men and women. Each day, 
 at an appointed hour, they assembled, ranged themselves in 
 two lines, and paraded the streets scourging their naked 
 shoulders and chanting a hymn. At a given signal, all with 
 the exception of the last,'threw themselves flat on the ground; 
 and he who was last, as he passed by his companions, gave 
 each a lash, and then also lay down. The others followed 
 in succession, till every individual in his or her turn had re- 
 ceived a stroke from the whole brotherhood. The citizens 
 of London gazed and marvelled, pitied and commended ; 
 but they went no farther. Their faith w^as too weak, or their 
 skins too delicate ; and they allowed the strangers to mcnio- 
 polise all the merits of such a religious exercise. The mis- 
 sionaries did not make a single convert, and were obliged to 
 return without any other success than the conviction of 
 having done their duty to an unbelieving generation. 
 
 Though the practice was at first encouraged by the 
 Church, the Flagellants subsequently fell under its ban as here- 
 tical ; for they taught that many of its doctrines were false, 
 and that faith and flagellation, with a behef in the Apostles' 
 Creed, were alone necessary to salvation. The priests com- 
 plained of their loss of influence ; the hierarchy took the alarm ; 
 and the Pope prohibited throughout Christendom the con- 
 tinuance of the flagellant pilgrimages, under pain of excom- 
 munication. The flagellants were then everywhere persecuted, 
 and some of them were burned as heretics ; but it was long 
 before the Mania was completely repressed. It broke out 
 several times in the later part of the fourteenth century ; 
 in the fifteenth it was deemed necessary in several parts of 
 Germany to exterminate the flagellants with fire and sword ; 
 yet as late as 17 10 their processions were still seen in Italy. 
 Of the strength of this ' possession,' it is scarcely possible to 
 conceive a stronger instance than is presented by the depo- 
 
122 APPENDIX C. 
 
 sition of a citizen of Nordhausen, in 1446, that his wife, in 
 the behef of performing a Christian act, wanted to scourge 
 her children as soon as they were baptised ! 
 
 APPENDIX C. 
 
 DANCING MANIA. 
 
 " In the year 1374, assemblages of men and women were 
 seen at Aix-la-Chapelle, who had come out of Germany, and 
 who, united by one common delusion, exhibited to the public, 
 both in the streets and in the churches, the following strange 
 spectacle : — They formed circles hand in hand, and appear- 
 ing to have lost all control over their senses, continued 
 dancing, regardless of the bystanders, for hours together, in 
 wild delirium, until at length they fell to the ground in a state 
 of exhaustion. They then complained of extreme oppres- 
 sion, and groaned as if in the agonies of death, until they 
 were swathed in clothes bound tightly round their waists ; 
 upon which they again recovered, and remained free from 
 complaint until the next attack. This practice of swathing 
 was resorted to, on account of the tympany Avhich followed 
 these spasmodic ravings ; but the bystanders frequently re- 
 lieved patients in a less artificial manner, by thumping and 
 trampling upon the parts affected. While dancing they 
 neither saw nor heard, being insensible to external impres- 
 sions through the senses ; but were haunted by visions, their 
 fancies conjuring up spirits, whose names they shrieked out; 
 and some of them afterwards asserted that they felt as if 
 they had been immersed in a stream of blood, which obliged 
 them to leap so high. Others, during the paroxysm, saw 
 the heavens open, and the Saviour enthroned with the Vir- 
 gin Mary ; according as the religious notions of the age 
 were strangely and variously reflected in their imaginations. 
 
APPENDIX C. 123 
 
 Where the disease was completely developed, the attack 
 commenced with epileptic convulsions. Those affected fell 
 to the ground senseless, panting and labouring for breath. 
 They foamed at the mouth, and suddenly springing up began 
 their dance amidst strange contortions. 
 
 " A few months after this dancing malady had made its 
 appearance at Aix-la-Chapelle, it broke out at Cologne, 
 where the number of those possessed amounted to more 
 than five hundred ; and about the same time at Metz, the 
 streets of which place are said to have been filled with 
 eleven hundred dancers. Peasants left their ploughs, me- 
 chanics their workshops, housewives their domestic duties, 
 to join the wild revels ; and this rich commercial city 
 became the scene of the most ruinous disorder. 
 
 "The St. Vitus's dance attacked people of all stations, 
 especially those who led a sedentary life, such as shoemakers 
 and tailors ; but even the most robust peasants abandoned 
 their labours in their fields, as if they were possessed by 
 evil spirits; and those affected were seen assembling indis- 
 criminately, from time to time, at certain appointed places, 
 and, unless prevented by the lookers-on, continued to dance 
 without intermission, until their very last breath was expen- 
 ded. Their fury and extravagance of demeanour so com- 
 pletely deprived them of their senses, that many of them 
 dashed their brains out against the walls and corners of 
 buildings, or rushed headlong into rapid rivers, where they 
 found a watery grave. Roaring and foaming as they were, 
 the bystanders could only succeed in restraining them by 
 placing benches and chairs in their Avay, so that, by the 
 high leaps they were thus tempted to take, their strength 
 might be exhausted. As soon as this was the case, they fell, 
 as it were, lifeless to the ground, and, by very slow degrees, 
 recovered their strength. Many there were, who, even with 
 all this exertion, had not expended the violence of the tem- 
 pest which raged within them ; but awoke with newly re- 
 
124 APPENDIX D. 
 
 vived powers, and again and again mixed with the crowd of 
 dancers ; until at length the violent excitement of their dis- 
 ordered nerves was allayed by the great involuntary exertion 
 of their limbs ; and the mental disorder was calmed by the 
 exhaustion of the body. The cure effected by these stormy 
 attacks was in many cases so perfect, that some patients re- 
 turned to the factory or the plough, as if nothing had hap- 
 pened. Others, on the contrary, paid the penalty of their 
 folly by so total a loss of power, that they could not regain 
 their former health, even by the employment of the most 
 strengthening remedies."— (Hecker's Epidemics of the Middle 
 Ages, pp. 87-104.) 
 
 APPENDIX D. 
 
 THE 'animal magnetism' OF MESMER. 
 
 *' Animal Magnetism is a fluid universally diffused ; it is 
 the medium of a mutual influence between the heavenly 
 bodies, the earth, and animated bodies ; it is everywhere 
 continuous, so as to leave no void ; its subtlety admits of 
 no comparison ; it is capable of receiving, propagating, 
 communicating all the impressions of motion ; it is suscep- 
 tible of flux and of reflux. The animal body experiences 
 the effects of this agent ; by insinuating itself into the sub- 
 stance of the nerves it affects them immediately. There are 
 observed, particularly in the human body, properties ana- 
 logous to those of the magnet ; and in it are discerned pro- 
 perties equally different and opposite. The action and the 
 virtues of animal magnetism may be communicated from 
 one body to other bodies, animate and inanimate. This 
 action takes place at a remote distance, without the aid of 
 any intermediate body ; it is increased, reflected by mirrors; 
 communicated, propagated, augmented by sound ; its virtues 
 
APPENDIX E. 125 
 
 may be accumulated, concentrated, transported. Although 
 this fluid is universal, all animal l)odies are not equally sus- 
 ceptible of it ; there are even some, though a very small 
 number, which have properties so opposite, that their very 
 presence destroys all the effects of this fluid on other bodies. 
 Animal Magnetism is capable of healing diseases of the 
 nerves immediately, and others mediately. It perfects the 
 action of medicines ; it excites and directs salutary crises in 
 such a manner that the physician may render himself master 
 of them ; by its means he knows the state of health of each 
 individual, and judges with certainty of the origin, the nature, 
 and the progress of the most complicated diseases ; he pre- 
 vents their increase, and succeeds in healing them without 
 at any time exposing his patient to dangerous effects or 
 troublesome consequences; whatever be the age, the tem- 
 perament, and the sex. In animal magnetism, nature pre- 
 sents a universal method of healing and preserving man- 
 kind." — {Memoire sur la Decouverte du Magnctisme Anijnal, 
 par M. Mesmer. Paris, 1779, p. 74, et seq. — Ibid^ Avis du 
 Lee fairy p. 6.) 
 
 APPENDIX E. 
 
 REPORT ON MESMER'S PRETENSIONS, BY THE COMMISSION 
 APPOINTED BY THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, PARIS, 
 
 *'The sick persons, arranged in great numbers and in 
 several rows around the baquet, receive the magnetism by 
 all these means ; by the iron rods which convey to them that 
 of the baquet ; by the cords wound round their bodies ; by 
 the connection of the thumbs which communicate to them 
 that of their neighbours ; by the sound of the pianoforte, or 
 of an agreeable voice diffusing the magnetism in the air ; by 
 
126 APPENDIX E. 
 
 the finger and rod of the magnetiser moved before their 
 faces, above or behind their heads, and on the diseased 
 parts, always observing the direction of the poles ; by the 
 eye of the magnetiser ; but above all by the application of 
 his hands and the pressure of his fingers on the hypochon- 
 dria and on the regions of the abdomen ; an application 
 often continued for a long time, sometimes for several hours. 
 Meanwhile the patients, in their different conditions, present 
 a varied picture. Some are calm, tranquil, and experience 
 no effect ; others cough, spit, feel slighf pains, local or gene- 
 ral heat, and have sweatings ; others again are agitated or 
 tormented with convulsions. These convulsions are remark- 
 able in regard to the number affected with them, and to 
 their duration and force ; and are characterised by the pre- 
 cipitous involuntary motions of all the limbs and of the 
 whole body, by the constriction of the throat, by the violent 
 heavings of the hypochondria and the epigastrium ; by the 
 dimness and wandering of the eyes ; by piercing shrieks, 
 tears, sobbing, and immoderate laughter. They are preceded 
 or followed by a state of languor and reverie, a kind of 
 depression, and even drowsiness. The smallest unforeseen 
 noise occasions shudderings ; even a change of tone and 
 measure in the airs played on the pianoforte influences the 
 patients, a quicker motion agitating them more and renewing 
 the vivacity of their convulsions. Nothing is more astonish- 
 ing than the spectacle of these convulsions ; one who has 
 not seen them can form no idea of them. The spectator is 
 equally astonished at the profound repose of one part of the 
 patients, and at the agitation of the rest ; at the various 
 accidents which are repeated, and the sympathies which are 
 estabhshed. Some patients devote their exclusive attention 
 to each other, rushing towards one another, smiling, speak- 
 ing with affection, and mutually soothing their crises. All 
 are under the power of the magnetiser ; it matters not in 
 what state of drowsiness they may be j his voice, a look, a 
 
APPENDIX E. 127 
 
 gesture brings them out of it." — (Report of the Commission 
 of the French Academy of Sciences.) 
 
 The Commissioners further reported — " That this pre- 
 tended agent certainly is not common Magnetism; for on ex- 
 amining the baqnet, the grand reservoir of this wonderful 
 fluid, by means of a needle and electrometer, not the slightest 
 indication of the presence either of common magnetism or of 
 electricity was afforded ; that it is wholly inappreciable by 
 any of the senses, or by any mechanical or chemical process; 
 that they tried it upon themselves and upon many others, 
 without being able to perceive anything ; that on blindfold- 
 ing those who seemed to be most susceptible to its influence, 
 all its ordinary effects were produced when nothing was done 
 to them, but when they imagined they were being magnet- 
 ised, while none of its effects were produced when they were 
 really magnetised, but imagined that nothing was being 
 done ; that, in like manner, when brought under a magnet- 
 ised tree, nothing happened if the subjects of the experi- 
 ment thought they were at a distance from the tree, while 
 they were immediately thrown into convulsions if they 
 believed they were near the tree, although really at a distance 
 from it ; that, consequently the effects actually produced 
 were produced purely by the imagination ; that these effects, 
 though some cures might be wrought, were not without dan- 
 ger, since the convulsions excited were often violent and 
 exceedingly apt to spread, especially among men feeble in 
 body and weak in mind, and almost universally among 
 women ; and finally, that there were parts of the operation 
 of magnetising which might readily be turned to vicious pur- 
 poses, and that immoral practices had already actually grown 
 out of them.'— (/^/V/.) 
 
128 APPENDIX F. 
 
 APPENDIX F. 
 
 EXTRAORDINARY MUSCULAR ENERGY PRODUCIBLE BY 
 MENTAL CONCENTRATION. 
 
 It is a well-known fact that when the whole energy is 
 concentrated upon some Muscular effort, especially under the 
 influence of an overpowering emotion, U^e body seems 
 endowed with superhuman strength and agility, so as to be 
 able to accomplish some extraordinary feat, at which the 
 performer himself stands aghast when he contemplates it 
 after his return to his sober senses. Thus an old cook-maid 
 who heard an alarm of fire, seized an enormous box contain- 
 ing the whole of her property, and ran down stairs with it as 
 easily as she would have carried a dish of meat ; yet after 
 the fire had been extinguished, she could not lift it a hair's 
 breadth from the ground, and two men were required to 
 carry it upstairs again. — It was by the artificial induction of 
 a like state of concentrated effort, coupled with the assurance 
 of easy success, ('it will go up like a feather,') with which 
 he had completely possessed his 'subject's' mind, that Mr. 
 Braid (in my presence) enabled a man so remarkable for the 
 poverty of his physique, that he had not for many years 
 ventured to lift a weight of twenty pounds, to take up a 
 weight of 28 lbs. upon his little finger, and swing it round 
 his head, with the greatest apparent ease. Neither Mr. 
 Braid nor his son, both of them powerful men, could do 
 anything like this ; and I could not myself lift the same 
 weight on my little finger to more than half my own height. 
 Trickery in this case was obviously impossible ; since, if the 
 'subject' had been trained to such feats, the effect of such 
 training would have become visible in his muscular develop- 
 ment. 
 
APPENDIX G. 129 
 
 APPENDIX G. 
 
 EXAMINATION OF MR. LEWIS'S EXPERIMENTS ON MES- 
 MERISM, AT THE MEDICAL SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY 
 AND king's COLLEGE, ABERDEEN. 
 
 The Committee consisted of three professors, two medical 
 men, and a clergyman, who undertook the investigation at 
 the earnest solicitation of the pupils in the Medical School. 
 The experiments were conducted in a perfectly fair spirit, 
 with every desire to do ample justice to the operator, and 
 at the same time in such a manner as to guard against all 
 obvious sources of fallacy. The ' subjects ' were chosen by 
 Mr. Lewis from among the students; their susceptibility 
 having been previously tested by him. Three of the Com- 
 mittee remained in the Class-room where the ' subject ' was 
 seated, and recorded the time and description of the move- 
 ments he performed; whilst the other three went into an 
 adjoining room with Mr. Lewis, to direct at successive inter- 
 vals the various movements they wished him to excite by 
 his silent will and bodily gestures, recording each direction 
 with the time at which it was given. When the round of 
 the experiments was finished, these three gentlemen returned 
 into the Class-room, and both reports were then read aloud 
 and compared. 
 
 The following is the first act in the performance : — 
 
 Exactly at three p.m. Mr. Lewis was desired by his com- 
 mittee to ' make Mr. M. lie on the floor with his face 
 
 on the floor.' No other direction was given for five 
 7niniitcs ; during which Mr. M. made foiirteeii movements, 
 not one of which had been willed by Mr. Lewis, or bore the 
 least resemblance to that which he did will. 
 
I30 APPENDIX G. 
 
 H. M. M?'. Jirs. Movements. 
 
 2y.\\ P.M. — Raised himself up in the chair and shook him- 
 self. 
 
 3.2 P.M. — Slipped down a litde. Got up and sat down. 
 Changed his seat. 
 
 3.2^ P.M. — Rubbed his hand on his thigh, and his left arm 
 with his right hand. 
 
 3. 3 J P.M. — Stamped on the floor and moved his feet side- 
 ways ; then got up and changed his seat 
 again. 
 
 2i.z% P-^i- — Folded arms. Put left hand behind. 
 
 3.4^ P.M. — Rocked his body from side to side. 
 
 The divergence was equally great in all the other experi- 
 ments; so that the Committee unanimously agreed in the 
 Report (to which Mr. Lewis could make no objection) that 
 " these experiments afford no ground whatever for the 
 
 " opinion that either Mr. L or any other person can in- 
 
 " fluence another at a distance from him." Mr. Lewis being 
 further challenged to prove his control over the influence of 
 gravitation, by making Mr. M. stand on one leg, with the 
 same side of his body and his foot pressed close to the 
 wall, he utterly failed to do so. 
 
 In accordance with an arrangement previously made, Mr. 
 Lewis left the Class-room when this series of experiments 
 had been brought to an end ; and the spectators were re- 
 quested to remain quiet for a while, as another experiment 
 was about to be tried — this being as to Mr. Lewis's asserted 
 power of mesmerising from a distance. This power he was 
 to exercise from his lodgings upon Mr. M., the subject of 
 his previous experiments, at 4 hours 5 min. p.m. Instead, 
 however, of passing into the mesmeric sleep, Mr. M. got up 
 from his scat at 4 hours 5 min., came suddenly forward to a 
 chair, sat upon it in a state of apparent excitement for half a 
 minute, then rushed back, snatched his hat from the 
 grouncJ, and ran off to Mr, L.'s lodgings, where, however. 
 
APPENDIX ir. 131 
 
 he did 7jot find Mr. L. Anodier gentleman, Mr. H., who 
 had been previously acted on, seemed to suppose that he 
 was again affected by Mr. L.'s manoeuvres ; for, after Mr. 
 M. first got up, he bent down his head, and appeared to be 
 in a state of great nervous excitement ; refusing to leave on 
 being pressed to do so. He remained in this state for half 
 an hour, and was at last induced to go away, in company of 
 two students who took charge of him. Before he could be 
 prevailed upon to go home, he also went to Mr. L.'s lodg- 
 ings, feeling himself irresistibly drawn thither by Mr. L.'s 
 silent will ; but it was ascertained that all this occurred 
 without Mr. Lewis having directed his mind to him at all ! 
 The supposed ' attraction ' thus obviously existed only in 
 the imaginations of the 'subjects,' who had heard of Mr. 
 Lewis's asserted powder, and supposed that it w^as being 
 exerted upon them. — Edinburgh Monthly foiirnal of Medical 
 Science, February, 1852. 
 
 APPENDIX H. 
 
 SUPPOSED INFLUENCE OF MAGNETS ON MESMERISED SUB 
 JECTS SHOWN TO BE DUE TO MENTAL SUGGESTION. 
 
 "When in London lately," says Mr. Braid, " I had the plea- 
 sure of calling upon an eminent and excellent physician who 
 is in the habit of using mesmerism in his practice, in suitable 
 cases, just as he uses any other remedy. He spoke of the ex- 
 traordinary effects which he had experienced from the use of 
 magnets applied during the mesjneric state, and kindly offered 
 to illustrate the fact on a patient who had been asleep all the 
 time I was in the room, and in that stage, during which I 
 felt assured she could overhear every word of our conversa- 
 tion. He told me, that when he put the magnet into her 
 7 
 
132 APPENDIX 11. 
 
 hands, it would produce catalepsy of the hands and arms, 
 and such was the result. He wafted the hands, and the 
 catelepsy ceased. He said that a mere touch of a magnet 
 on a limb would stiffen it, and such he proved to be the 
 fact. 
 
 " I now told him, that I had got a little instrument in my 
 poctet, which, although far less than his, I felt assured 
 would prove quite as powerful ; and I offered to prove this 
 by operating on the same patient, whom I had never seen 
 before, and who was in the mesmeric state when I entered 
 the room. My instrument was about three inches long, tTie 
 thickness of a quill, with a ring attached to the end of it. I 
 told him that when put into her hands, he would find it 
 catalepsize both hands and arms as his had done ; and such 
 was the result. Having reduced this by wafting, I took my 
 instrument from her, and again returned it, iii another posi- 
 tion., and told him it would now have the very reverse effect 
 — that she would not be able to hold it, and that although I 
 closed her hands on it, they would open, and that it would 
 dVop out of them ; and such was the case, to the great sur- 
 prise of my worthy friend, who now desired to be informed 
 what I had done to the instrument to invest it with this new 
 and opposite power. This I declined doing for the present ; 
 but I promised to do so, when he had seen some further 
 pi oofs of its remarkable powers. I now told him that a 
 touch with it on either extremity would cause the extremity 
 to rise and become cataleptic, and. such was the result; that 
 a second touch on the same point would reduce the rigidity, 
 and cause it to fall, and such again was proved to be the 
 fact. After a variety of other experiments, every one of 
 which proved precisely as I had predicted, she was aroused. 
 I now applied the ring of my instrument on the third finger 
 of the right hand, from which it was suspended, and told 
 the doctor, that when it was so suspended, it would send 
 her to sleep. To this he replied " // never will^' but I again 
 
APPENDIX 11. 133 
 
 told him that I felt confident that it would send her to 
 sleep. We then were silent, and very speedily she was once 
 more asleep. Having aroused her, I put the instrument on 
 the second finger of her right hand, and told the doctor that 
 it would be found she could not go to sleep, when it was 
 placed there. He said he thought she would, and he sat 
 steadily gazing at her, but I said firmly and confidently that 
 she would not. After a considerable time the doctor asked 
 her if she did not feel sleepy, to which she replied ' not at 
 all ' ; could you rise and walk ? when she told him she 
 could. I then requested her to look at the point of the 
 fore-finger of her right hand, which I told the doctor would 
 send her to sleep, and such was the result ; and, after being 
 aroused, I desired her to keep a steady gaze at the nail of 
 the thumb of the left hand, which would send her to sleep 
 in like manner, and such proved to be the fact. 
 
 " Having repaired to another room, I explained to the 
 doctor the real nature and powers of my little and appa- 
 rently magical instrument,— that it was nothing more than 
 my portma7itean-kcy and I'tng ; and that what had imparted 
 to it such apparently varied powers, was merely the predic- 
 tions which the patient had overheard me make to him, act- 
 ing upon her in the peculiar state of the nervous sleep, as 
 irresistible impulses to be affected, according to the results 
 she had heard me predict. Had I predicted that she would 
 see any flame, or colour, or form, or substance, animate or 
 inanimate, I know from experience that such would have 
 been realised, and responded to by her ; and that, not from 
 any desire on her part to impose upon others, but because 
 she was self-deceived, the vividness of her imagination in 
 that state, inducing her to believe as real, what were only 
 the figments of fancy, suggested to her mind by the remarks 
 of others. The power of suggestions of this sort also, in 
 paralysing or energising muscular power, is truly astound- 
 ing ; and may all arise in perfect good faith with almost all 
 patients who have passed into the second conscious state, 
 
134 APPENDIX I. 
 
 and with some, during the first conscious stage ; and with 
 some weak-minded, or highly imaginative or credulous and 
 concentrative people, even in the waking conditioii'^ (Braid 
 on The Power of the Mind ovej- the Body ^ 1846; p. 31.) 
 
 APPENDIX L 
 
 MR. braid's experiments ON SUBJECTIVE SENSATIONS. 
 
 " A lady, upwards of fifty- six years of age, in perfect 
 health, and wide awake, having been taken into a dark 
 closet, and desired to look at the poles of the powerful 
 horse- shoe magnet of nine elements, and describe what she 
 saw, declared, after looking a considerable time, that she 
 saw nodiing. However, after I told her to look attentively, 
 and she would see fire come out of it, she speedily saw 
 sparks, and presently it seemed to her to burst forth, as she 
 had witnessed an artificial representation of the volcano of 
 Mount Vesuvius at some public gardens. Without her 
 knowledge, I closed down the lid of the trunk which con- 
 tained the magnet, hit still the same appearances were de- 
 scribed as visible. By putting leading questions, and asking 
 her to describe what she saw from another part of the closet 
 (where there w^as nothing but bare walls) she went on describ- 
 ing various shades of most brilliant coruscations and flame, 
 according to the leading questions I had put for the purpose 
 of changing the fundamental ideas. On repeating the expe- 
 riments, similar results were repeatedly realised by this 
 patient. On taking this lady into the said closet after the 
 magnet had been removed to another part of the house, she 
 still perceived the same visible appearances of light and flame 
 when there was nothing but the bare walls to produce them ; 
 and, two weeks after the magnet was removed, when she 
 went into the closet by herself, the mere association of ideas 
 was sufiicient to cause her to realise a visible representation 
 
APPENDIX I 135 
 
 of the same liglit and flames. Indeed such had been the 
 case with her on entering the closet ever since the few first 
 times she saw the Hght and flames. In Uke manner when 
 she was made to touch the poles of the magnet when wide 
 awake, no manifestations of attraction took place between 
 her hand and the magnet, but the moment the idea was 
 suggested that she would be held fast by its powerful attrac- 
 tion, so that she would be utterly unable to separate her 
 hands from it, such result was realised ; and, on separating 
 it, by the suggestion of a new idea, and causing her to touch 
 the other pole in like manner, predicating that // would exert 
 no attractive poivcr for the fingers or hands, such negative 
 effects were at once manifested. I know this lady w^as in- 
 capable of trying to deceive myself, or others present ; but 
 she was self-deceived and spell-bound by the predominance 
 of a pre-conceived idea, and was not less surprised at the 
 var}dng powers of the instrument than others who witnessed 
 the results." {^Op, ctt., p. 19.) 
 
 Other ' subjects ' taken by Mr. Braid into his dark closet, 
 and unable to see anything in the first instance, when told 
 to look steadily at a certain point (though there was no 
 magnet there) and assured that they would see flame and 
 light of various colours issuing from it, very soon declared 
 that they saw them ; and in some of them the same sensa- 
 tions could be called up in open daylight. — The following 
 was an experiment made, zvith and without the magnet, 
 upon the sensations of the general surface; the 'subject' 
 being a young gentleman twenty- one years of age : — 
 
 " I first operated on his right hand, by drawing a powerful 
 horse-shoe magnet over the hand, without contact, whilst 
 the, armature was attached. He immediately observed a 
 sensation of cold follow the course of the magnet. I re- 
 versed the passes, and he felt it /ess cold, but he felt no 
 attraction between his hand and the magnet. I then re- 
 moved the cross-bar, and tried the efi'ect with both poles 
 
136 APPENDIX I. 
 
 alternately, but still there was no change in the effect, and 
 decidedly no proof of attraction between his hand and the 
 magnet. In the afternoon of the same day I desired him to 
 look aside, and hold his hat between his eyes and his hand, 
 and observe the effects when I operated on him, whilst he 
 could not see my proceedings. He very soon described a 
 recurrence of the same sort of sensations as those he felt in 
 the morning, but they speedily became more intense, and 
 extended up the arm, producing rigidity of the member. In 
 the course of two minutes this feeling attacked the other 
 arm, and to some extent the whole body; and he was, 
 moreover, seized with a fit of invokmtary laughter, like that 
 of hysteria, which continued for several minutes — in fact, 
 until I put an end to the experiment. His first remark was, 
 * Now this experiment clearly proves that there must be 
 some intimate connection between mineral magnetism and 
 mesmerism ; for I was most strangely affected, and could not 
 possibly resist laughing during the extraordinary sensations 
 with which 'my whole body was seized, as you drew the 
 magnet over my hand and arm.' I replied that I drew a 
 very different conclusion from the experiments, as / had 
 never used the magnet at all, nor held it, nor anything else, 
 near to him ; and that the whole proved the truth of my 
 position as to the extraordinary power of the mind over the 
 body." {Oj>. cit.,-^. 14.) 
 
 Phenomena of the same kind were found to be produci- 
 ble without the use of a magnet at all : — 
 
 " Another interesting case of a married lady, I experi- 
 mented with, in the presence of her husband, as follows. I 
 requested her to place her hand on the table, with the palm 
 upwards, so situated as to enable her to observe the process 
 I was about to resort to. I had previously remarked, that by 
 my drawing something slowly over the hand, without contact, 
 whilst the patient concentrated her attention on the process, 
 she would experience some peculiar sensations in conse- 
 
APPENDIX I. 137 
 
 quence. I took a pair of her scissors, and drew tlie bowl of 
 the handle slowly from the wrist downwards. I had only 
 done so a few times, when she felt a creeping, chilly sensa- 
 tion, which was immediately followed by a spasmodic 
 twitching of the muscles, so as to toss the hand from the 
 table, as the members of a prepared frog are agitated when 
 galvanised. I next desired her to place her other hand on 
 the table, in like manner, but placed so that by turning her 
 head in the opposite direction she might not see what was 
 being done, and to watch her sensations in that hand, and 
 tell us the result. In about the same length of time similar 
 phenomena were manifested as with the other hand, although 
 in this instance / had do?ie nofhifig whatever, and was not 
 near her hand. I now desired her to watch what happened 
 to her hand, when I predicated that she would feel it be- 
 come cold, and the result was as predicted ; and vice versa, 
 predicating that she would feel it become intensely hot, such 
 was realised. When I desired her to think of the tip of her 
 nose, the predicated result, either of heat or cold, was 
 speedily realised in that part. 
 
 " Another lady, twenty-eight years of age, being operated 
 on in the same manner, whilst looking at my proceedings, in 
 the course of half-a-minute, described the sensation as that 
 of the blood rushing into the fingers ; and when the motion 
 of my pencil-case was from below, upwards, the sensation 
 was that of the current of blood being revei-sed, but less 
 rapid in its motion. On resuming the downward direction, 
 the original feeling occurred, still more powerfully than at 
 first. This lady being requested now to look aside, whilst I 
 operated, realised similar sensations, and that whilst / was 
 doing nothing. 
 
 " The husband of this lady, twenty-eight and a half years 
 of age, came into the room shortly after the above experi- 
 ment was finished. She was very desirous of my trying the 
 effect upon him, as he was in perfect health. I requested 
 
138 APPENDIX I. 
 
 him to extend his right arm laterally, and let it rest on a 
 chair with the palm upwards, to turn his head in the oppo- 
 site direction so that he might not see what I was doing, 
 and to concentrate his attention on the feelings which might 
 arise during my process. In about half-a-minute he felt an 
 aui-a like a breath of air passing along the hand ; in a little 
 after a slight pricking, and presently a feeling passed along 
 the arm, as far as the elbow, which he described as similar 
 to that of being slightly electrified. All this while I had 
 been doing 7iothing, beyond watching what might be realised. 
 I then desired him to tell me what he felt now — speaking in 
 such a tone of voice as was calculated to lead him to believe 
 I was operating in some different manner. The result was 
 that the former sensations ceased; but, when I requested 
 him once more to tell me what he felt 7ww, the former sen- 
 sations recurred. I then whispered to his wife, but in a 
 tone sufficiently loud to be heard by him, observe now, and 
 you will find his fingers begin to draw, and his hand will be- 
 come clenched — see how the little finger begins to move, 
 and such was the case ; see the next one also going in like 
 manner, and such effects followed; and finally, the entire 
 hand closed firmly, with a very unpleasant drawing motion 
 of the whole flexor-muscles of the fore-arm. I did nothing 
 whatever to this patient until the fingers were nearly closed, 
 when I touched the palm of his hand with the point of my 
 finger, which caused it to close more rapidly and firmly. 
 After it had remained so for a short time, I blew upon the 
 hand, which dissipated the previously existing mental im- 
 pression, and instantly the hand became relaxed. The high 
 respectability and intelligence of this gentleman rendered 
 his testimony very valuable; and especially so, when he was 
 not only wide awake, but had never been either mesmerised, 
 hypnotised, or so tested before." {Op. ci/., pp. 15-17.) 
 
APPENDICES A', L. i39 
 
 APPENDIX K. 
 
 PKNDULE EXPLORATEUR. 
 
 We are told by Ammianus Marcellinus (the last of the 
 Roman Historians) that, in the reign of the Emperor Flavins 
 Valens (4th century) a conspiracy was formed, including 
 many persons of high rank, who devot'ed themselves to 
 'curious arts,' among them the celebrated lamblicus, a 
 mystic philosopher of the Alexandrian School ; their objects 
 being to learn who would be the successor of the reigning 
 Emperor, which piece of curiosity was held to be a capital 
 crime. Of the magical procedure they employed, of which 
 a full description was given by one of them named Hilarius 
 when put on his trial, the oscillations of a suspended ring, 
 that pointed to one letter after another of an alphabet cir- 
 cularly disposed, constituted the essential part. The three 
 letters GEO having been thus spelled-out, the conspirators 
 made up their minds that Theodosius was indicated ; and 
 although the principal members of the conspiracy were after- 
 wards put to death by the Emperor, the destiny of Theo- 
 dosius was accomplished, for he ultimately became the 
 successor of Valens. 
 
 APPENDIX L. 
 
 TABLE-TALKING AND TLANCHETTE- WRITING. 
 
 '• Several years ago we were invited, with two medical 
 friends, to a very select sea7ia\ to witness the performance 
 
 of a lady, the Hon. Miss N , who was described to us 
 
 as a peculiarly gifted 'medium;' not merely being the 
 vehicle of ' spiritual ' revelations of the most elevating cha- 
 racter, but being able to convince incredulous philosophers 
 
I40 APPENDIX L. 
 
 like ourselves of the reality of her * spiritual ' gifts, by 
 ' physical ' manifestations of the most unmistakable kind. 
 
 Unfortunately, however, the Hon. Miss N was not in 
 
 great force on the occasion of our visit ; and nothing would 
 go right. It was suggested that she might be exhausted by 
 a most successful performance which had taken place on 
 the previous evening ; and that ' the spirits ' should be asked 
 whether she stood in need of refreshment. The question 
 was put by our host (a wine-merchant, be it observed), who 
 repeated the alphabet rapidly until he came to n, and then 
 went on sloivly ; the table tilted at p. The same process 
 was repeated, until the letters successively indicated were 
 I', o, R, T. But this was not enough. The spirits might 
 prescribe either porf or porter ; and the alphabet was then 
 repeated slowly from_ the begifining^ a prolonged pause being 
 made at e ; as the table did not tilt, a bumper of port was 
 administered ' as directed.' It did not, however, produce 
 the expected effect. 
 
 " On another occasion, we happened to be on a visit at a 
 house at which two ladies were staying, who worked the 
 plandutte on the original method (that of attaching to it a 
 pointer, which indicated letters and figures on a card), and 
 our long previous knowledge of whom placed them beyond 
 all suspicion of anything but j-^^- deception. One of them 
 was a firm believer in the reality of her intercourse with the 
 spirit-world ; and her ' planchette ' was continually at work 
 beneath her hands, its index pointing to successive letters 
 and figures on the card before it, just as if it had been that 
 of a telegraph- dial acted on by galvanic communication. 
 After having watched the operation for some time, and 
 assured ourselves that the answers she obtained' to the 
 questions she put to her ' spiritual' visitants were just what 
 her own simple and devout nature would suggest, we ad- 
 dressed her thus : — * You believe that your replies are dic- 
 ' tated to you by your " spiritual " friends, and that your hands 
 
APPENDIX L. 141 
 
 ' are the passive vehicles of the " spiritual " agency by which 
 
 * the planchette is directed in spelHng them out. We beHeve, 
 ' on the other hand, that the answers are the products of your 
 
 * own Brain, and that the planchette is moved by your own 
 ' Muscles. Now we can test, by a very simple experiment, 
 ' whether your view or oins is the correct one. Will you be 
 Mvind enough to shut your eyes when you ask your question, 
 ' and to let us watch what the planchette spells out? If " the 
 
 * spirits " guide it, there is no reason why they should not do 
 
 * so as well when your eyes are shut, as when they are open. 
 ' If the table is moved by your own hands, it will not give 
 'definite replies except under the guidance of your own 
 ' vision.' To this appeal our friend replied that she could 
 not think of making such an experiment, as * it would show 
 a want of faith ; ' and all our arguments and persuasions 
 could only bring her to the point of aski'ug the spirits \\\\c\hQi 
 she juig/it comply with our request. The reply was, ' No.' 
 She then, at our continued urgency, asked 'Why not?' 
 The reply was, 'Want of faith.' Putting a still stronger 
 pressure upon her, we induced her to ask, ' Faith in what ? ' 
 The reply was, ' In God.' 
 
 " Of course, any further appeal in that quarter would have 
 been useless; and we consequently addressed ourselves to 
 our other fair friend, whose high culture and great general 
 intelligence had prepared her for our own rationalistic 
 explanation of marvels which had seriously perplexed her. 
 For having been engaged a short time before in promoting 
 a public movement, which had brought her into contact 
 with a number of persons who had previously been strangers 
 to her, she had asked questions respecting them, which 
 elicited replies that were in many instances such as she 
 declared to be quite unexpected by herself, — specially tend- 
 ing to inculpate some of her coadjutors as influenced by 
 unworthy motives. After a little questioning, however, she 
 admitted to us that she had previously entertained lurking 
 
142 ArPENDIX L. 
 
 suspicions on this point, which she had scarcely even acknoW' 
 /edged to herself^ far less made known to others ; and was 
 much relieved when we pointed out that the planchette merely- 
 revealed \vhat was going on in the tinder-stratum of her own 
 mind. Her conversion to our view was. complete, when, on 
 her trying the working of the planchette with her eyes shut, 
 its pointer went astray altogether P {Quarterly Ranew, Oct. 
 1871, p. 315.) 
 
 It is often cited as a proof that the performers are not 
 expressing by involuntary muscular actions what is passing 
 in their own minds, that the answers given by the tables 
 are not kiiown to any of themselves, though known to sofne 
 other person in the room. Of this the following instance was 
 recorded by Mr. Godfrey: — 
 
 " I procured an alphabet on a board, such as is used in 
 a National School ; this board I laid down on the floor at 
 some little distance from the table, and I lay down on the 
 ground beside it. I then requested one of the three persons 
 at the table to command it to spell the Christian names of 
 
 Mr. L , of B , by lifting up the leg next him as I 
 
 pointed to the letters of the alphabet in succession. He did 
 so, and I began to point, keeping the pointer about three 
 seconds on each letter in succession (I must say, that neither 
 of the three persons at the table had ever heard of Mr. 
 
 L ; and B is 150 miles from this place). When I 
 
 arrived at G, they said, that's it ; the table is lifting its leg. 
 When I came to E, it rose again; and in this way it spelt 
 George Peter, which was perfectly correct." ( 7able-tu7'ning, 
 the DeviVs Modern Master-piece, p. 22.) Of course the 
 person wlio influenced the movements of the table was 
 guided by tlie indications afforded by Mr. Godfrey's own 
 unconscious expression of his expectancy. 
 
 So, again, the late Dr. Hare, an American Chemist and 
 Physicist of some reputation, thought that he had obtained 
 a precise experimental proof of the immortality of the soul (!) 
 by means of an apparatus by which the answers communi- 
 
APPENDIX L. 143 
 
 cated through the ' medium ' were spelled out by a hand 
 pointing to an alphabet-dial which was hidden from her eyes. 
 But it is clear from his narrative of the experiment, that her 
 eyes were fixed upon the person to whom the expected 
 answer was known, and that her movements were guided 
 by the indications she received from his involuntary move- 
 ments. 
 
 REPRODUCTION OF UNREMEMBERED IDEAS. 
 
 A ' planchette,' made in Bath, which had been on a visit 
 in various families for several months, having been asked 
 where it was made, replied ' Bath ; ' although the questioners 
 all thought it came from Lo7idon^ and disbelieved its state- 
 ment, which was afterwards verified. The rational expla- 
 nation of this obviously is, that the writing was guided by 
 the cerebral memory (so to speak), instead of by the co7iscioiis 
 memory ; just as in the case of the movements in acted 
 dreams, by which articles long lost have been found again. 
 
 The Rev. Mr. Dibdin, M.A. (in his Lecture on Table- 
 Turnings published in 1853), states that he and a friend 
 having directed the table to say, * How many years is it 
 since her Majesty came to the throne ? ' the table struck 
 sixteen^ though no one present knew the date of her acces- 
 sion ; and having directed it to ' give the age of the Prince 
 of Wales,' which was not known either to Mr. Dibdin or his 
 friend, the table struck elei^en, and then raised the foot a 
 little way. On referring to an Almanack, both these 
 numbers w^ere found to be correct. Further, the question 
 being put (in the house of a tailor), * How many men are at 
 work in the shop below ? ^ the table replied by striking ihrce^ 
 and giving tiuo gentle rises ; on which the employer, who 
 was one of the party, said, ' There are four men and two 
 boys, so three is a mistake ; ' but he afterwards rejnevibered 
 that one of the young men was out of to^yn. 
 
 " An eminent literary man, in whose veracity we have had 
 
144 APPENDIX £. 
 
 the fullest confidence, informed us that ' the spirit of a 
 friend, whose decease had taken place some months pre- 
 viously, having announced itself in the usual way, and the 
 question having been put, ' When did I last see you in life?' 
 the answer given was inconsistent with the recollection of 
 the interrogator. But, on his subsequently talking over the 
 matter w^th his family, it was brought to his remembrance 
 that he had seen his deceased friend on the occasion men- 
 tioned, and had spoken of it to them at the time, although 
 he had afterwards quite forgotten the circumstance."-— 
 {Quarterly Revieiv, October 187 1, p. 319.) 
 
 Another instance, supplied by Mr. Dibdin {op, dt.\ 
 affords yet more remarkable evidence to the same effect ; 
 especially as being related by a firm believer in the * dia- 
 bolical' origin of Table-talking : — A gendeman, who was at 
 the time a believer in the ' spiritual ' agency of his table, 
 assured Mr, Dibdin that he had raised a good spirit instead 
 of evil ones — that, namely, of Edward Young, the poet. 
 The ' spirit ' having been desired to prove this identity by 
 citing a line of his poetry, the table spelled out, ' Man was 
 not made to question, but adore.' ' Is that in your " Night 
 Tlioughts " .^ ' was then asked. * No.' * Where is it, then ? ' 
 The reply was, * j o b.' Not being familiar with Young's 
 Poems, the questioner did not know what this meant ; but 
 the next day he bought a copy of them; and at the end of 
 ^ Night Thoughts ' he found a paraphrase of the Book of 
 Job, the last line of which is, ' Man was not made to ques- 
 tion, but adore.' Of course he was very much astonished ; 
 but not long afterwards he came to Mr. Dibdin, and assured 
 him that he had satisfied himself that the whole thing was a 
 delusion, — numerous answers he had obtained being ob- 
 viously the results of an influence unconsciously exerted on 
 the table by those who had their hands upon it ; and when 
 asked by Mr. Dibdin how he accounted for the dictation of 
 tlie line by the spirit of Young, ho very honestly confessed, 
 
APPENDIX M. 141; 
 
 •Well, the fact is, I must tell you, that I had the book in 
 my house all the time, although I bought another copy ; and 
 / found that I had read it before. My opinion is that it was 
 a latent idea^ and that the table brought it out.' (p. 7.) 
 
 APPENDIX M. 
 
 DIABOLICAL ORIGIN OF TABLE TURNING. 
 
 In his Table-moving Tested, the Rev. N. S. Godfrey began 
 by " tracing the existence of Satanic influence from the time 
 of Moses to the time of Jesus ; connecting the ' witch,' the 
 * familiar spirit,' the spirit of Python, &c. with the Evil Spirit in 
 its actual and separate existence : " and asserting without the 
 least hesitation, that although ' so long as the supernatural 
 gifts of the Spirit remained among men, so long the evil 
 spirits were cast out and their presence detected,' yet that 
 when those miraculous powers were withdrawn, they could 
 no longer be discerned, but have continued to exist to the 
 present time, and make themselves known in these ' latter 
 times ' as the •' wandering (seducing) spirits,' whose appear- 
 ance was predicted by St. Paul (i Tim. iv. 10). That the 
 answers to the ' test questions ' were exactly contrary to Mr. 
 Godfrey's ideas of truth, was in his judgment peculiarly 
 convincing ; " for if indeed these tables do become possessed 
 " by some of the ' wandering spirits ' at the command of the 
 *' Devil, it would be most impohtic, and quite at variance with 
 " the subtlety of his character, to scare people at the very 
 *' outset." The following answers, therefore, are obviously 
 what Mr. G. expected : — 
 
 " I spoke to the table, and said, ' If you move by elec- 
 tricity, stop.* It stopped instantly ! I commanded it to go 
 on again, and said, while it was moving, ' If an evil spirit 
 
146 APPENDIX M. 
 
 cause you to move, stop.' It moved round without stopping! 
 I again said, ' If there be any evil agency in this, stop.' It 
 went on as before. I was now prepared w^ith an experiment 
 of a far more solemn character. ■ I w^hispered to the school- 
 master to bring a small Bible, and to lay it on the table when 
 I should tell him. I then caused the table to revolve rapidly, 
 and gave the signal. The Bible was geiitly laid on the table, 
 and it instantly stopped. We w-ere horror-struck. However, 
 I determined to persevere. I had other books in succession 
 laid on the table, to see whether the fact of a book lying 
 upon it altered any of the conditions under which it revolved. 
 It went round with them without making any difference. I 
 then tried with the Bible four different times, and each time 
 wdth the same result : // would not move so long as that pre- 
 cious volume lay upon it. ... I now said, ' If there be a 
 hell, I command you to knock on the floor with this leg (the 
 one next me) twice.' It was motionless. * If there be not 
 a hell, knock twice ; ' no answer. ' If there be a devil, knock 
 twice ; ' no motion. ' If there be not a devil, knock twice; ' 
 to our horror, the leg slowly rose and knocked tivtce f ] then 
 said, ' In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, if there be 7W 
 devil, knock twice ; ' it w\as motionless. This I tried four 
 several times, and each time with the same result." (p. 24.) 
 It is clear that Mr. Godfrey and his associates, if they 
 had not distinctly anticipated these results, were i\A\y prepared 
 for them. Thus, although he assures his readers that, when 
 the Bible was placed on the table, the emotion in the minds 
 of all the parties w^as curiosity, and that, if they had a bias, 
 it was against the table stopping, the very fact of the experi- 
 ment being tried by a man imbued with his prepossessions 
 on the subject of Evil Spirits, Witchcraft, &:c., sufficiently 
 indicates what his real state of mind was, although he may 
 not have been himself aware of it. His involuntary mus- 
 cular actions responded to this, although no voluntary move- 
 ment would have c^onc so, because he had not consciously 
 
APPEXDIX M. 147 
 
 accepted the Idea whosfe ' physical basis ' had been shaping 
 itself in the under-stratum. The experience of everyone 
 must have convinced him that there is often a contrariety 
 between our beliefs as to our own states of 7nt?td^ and i\\Q facts 
 of that state as they afterwards come to hQ self revealed to us; 
 and it is a very marked peculiarity of these movements, that 
 they often express more truly what is buried (as it were) in 
 the vaults of our storehouse, than what is displayed in the 
 ware-rooms above. 
 
 The Rev. E. Gillson, M.A,, a Clergyman of Bath, fully 
 partaking of his predecessor's convictions on the subject of 
 Satanic Agency, and also in the excitement prevailing in 
 many circles at that time on the subject of ' Papal Aggres- 
 sion,' gave the following mter alia as his experiences (Table- 
 Talking: Satanic Wonders and Prophetic Signs, 1853):— 
 
 " I placed my hand upon the table, and put a variety ot 
 questions, all of which w^ere instantly and correctly answered. 
 Various ages were asked, and all correctly told. In reply to 
 trifling questions, possessing no particular interest, the table 
 answered by quietly lifting up the leg and rapping. But in 
 answer to questions of a more exciting character, it would 
 become violently agitated, and sometimes to such a degree 
 that I can only describe the motion by the word frantic. I 
 inquired, 'Are you a departed spirit?' The answer was 
 ' Yes,' indicated, by a rap. ' Are you unhappy ? ' The table 
 answered by a sort of writhing motion (!), which no natural 
 power over it could imitate. It was then asked, ' Shall you 
 be for ever unhappy ? ' The same kind of writhing motion 
 was returned. 'Do you know Satan?' 'Yes.' 'Is he 
 the Prince of Devils ? ' ' Yes.' ' Will he be bound ? ' ' Yes.' 
 ' Will he be cast into the abyss ? ' ' Yes.' ' Will you be 
 cast in with him ? ' ' Yes.' 'How long will it be before he 
 is cast out ? ' He rapped ten. ' W^ill wars and commotions 
 intervene-?' The table rocked and reeled backwards and 
 forw'ards for a length of time, as if it intended a pantomimic 
 
148 APPENDIX M. 
 
 acting of the prophet's predictions (Isaiah xxiv. 20). I 
 then asked ' Where are Satan's head-quarters ? Are they in 
 England ? ' There was a slight movement. ' Are they in 
 France ? ' A violent movement. * Are they in Spain ? ' 
 Similar agitation. ' Are they at Rome ? ' The tabic literally 
 seemed frajitic. At the close of these experiments, which 
 occupied about two hoars, the invisible agent, in answer to 
 some questions about himself, did not agree with what had 
 been said before. I therefore asked, ' Are you the same 
 spirit that was in the table when we began ? ' ' No.' ' How 
 many spirits have been in the table this evening ? ' * Four.' 
 This spirit informed us that he had been an infidel, and had 
 embraced Popery about five years before his death. Amongst 
 other questions, he was asked, ' Do you know the Pope ? ' 
 The table was violendy agitated, I asked, ' How long will 
 Popery continue ? ' He rapped ten ; exactly coinciding with 
 the other spirits' account of the binding of Satan. Many 
 questions were asked, and experiments tried, in order to as- 
 certain whether the results would agree with Mr. Godfrey's ; 
 and on every occasion they did, especially that of stopping 
 the movejnent of the table with the Bible. As we proceeded 
 with our questions, we found an indescribable facility in the 
 conversation, from the extraordinary intelligence and ingenuity 
 displayed in the table (!) E.g. — I inquired if many devils 
 were posted in Bath. He replied by the most extraordinary 
 and rapid knocking of the three feet in succession, round 
 and round, for some time, as if to intimate that they were 
 innumerable ! " {Op. cit., pp. 4-8.) 
 
 A third Clergyman, the Rev. R. W. Dibdin, IM.A., while 
 agreeing with his predecessors in the belief that the move- 
 ments of the tables are the result of Satanic (or diabolic) 
 agency, differed from them in maintaining ' that devils alone 
 (not departed spirits) are the agents in these cases; and 
 being lying spirits, it is quite credible that, for purposes of 
 their own, they might assume the names of departed men 
 
APPENDIX M. 149 
 
 and women.' Of course he got the answers he expected on 
 this hypothesis. The following is his set of * test questions,' 
 the answers to which — being entirely opposed to his own 
 notions of truth— satisfied ///;;/, and were expected to satisfy 
 his partners in the experiment, of the diabolical character of 
 the respondent : — 
 
 " ' Are we justified by works ? ' * Yes.' — ' By faith 
 alone?' ' No.'— ' Is the whole Bible true?' ' No.'— 
 ' Were the miracles of the New Testament wrought by super- 
 natural power? ' ' No.'—' By some hidden law of Nature ?' 
 t Yes.' — ' Was Oliver Cromw^ell good? ' ' No.' — ' Was 
 Charles I. a good man ? ' ' Yes.'—' Is it right to pray to 
 the Virgin?' ' Yes.'— ' Is Christ God?' ' No.'— ' Is he 
 a man ? ' ' No.' — ' Is he something between God and 
 man, a sort of angel ? ' ' Yes.'—' Is he in heaven ? ' ' No.' 
 — ' Where is he ? ' It spelt slowly H E L L. — As the last 
 letter was indicated, the girl drew her hands quickly off the 
 table, much as a person would do who was drawing them off 
 a hot iron. Her brother-in-law turned very pale, and took 
 his hands off the table also." {Lecture on Table-turnings 
 1853 ; P- 8.) 
 
 The character, position, and obvious sincerity of the 
 actors in these performances place them beyond suspicion 
 of intentional deception ; and the phenomena they narrate 
 afford a singularly apposite illustration of the principle which 
 I desire to enforce. But that such obvious products 
 of the questioners' own mental states should have been 
 accepted by men of education, occupying the position of re- 
 ligious teachers in the National Church, as the lying re- 
 sponses of evil spirits, sent expressly to delude them, can 
 only be deemed — by such, at least, as are prepared to accept 
 a scientific rationale of the phenomena — a pitiable instance 
 of the readiness with which minds of a certain type may 
 allow themselves to become ' possessed ' by dominant ideas. 
 
ISO APPENDIX N. 
 
 APPENDIX N. 
 
 MRS. culver's statement. 
 
 *'I am by marriage a connection of the Fox girls. 
 Their brother married my husband's sister. The girls 
 have been a great deal at my house ; and for about two 
 years I was a very sincere believer in the rappings ; but 
 something which I saw when I was visiting the girls at 
 Rochester made me suspect that they were deceiving. I 
 resolved to satisfy myself in some way, and sometime 
 afterwards I made a proposition to Catherine to assist her 
 in producing the manifestations. I had a cousin visiting 
 me from Michigan, who was going to consult the spirits ; and 
 I told Catherine that if they intended going to Detroit, it 
 would be a great thing for them to convince him. I also 
 told her that if I could do anything to help her, I would do 
 it cheerfully ; that I should probably be able to answer all 
 the questions he would ask, and I would do it if she would 
 show me how to make the raps. She said that as Margaretta 
 was absent, she wanted somebody to help her ; and that if 
 I would become a medium, she would explain it all to me. 
 She said that when my cousin consulted the spirits, I must 
 sit next to her, and touch her arm when the right letter was 
 called. I did so, and was able to answer all the questions 
 correctly. After I had helped her in this way a few times, 
 she revealed to me the secret. The raps are produced by 
 the toes. All the toes are used. After nearly a week's 
 practice with Catherine showing me how, I could produce 
 them perfectly myself. 
 
 " At first it was very hard work to do it. Catherine told 
 me to warm my feet, or put them in warm water, and it 
 would then be easier to rap. She said that she had some- 
 times to warm her feet three or four times during the evening. 
 I found that heating my feet did enable me to rap a great 
 
APPENDIX A". 151 
 
 deal easier. I have sometimes produced 150 raps in suc- 
 cession. I can rap with all the toes on both feet ; it is 
 most difficult to rap with the great toe. Catherine told me 
 how to manage to answer the questions. She said it was 
 generally easy enough to answer right, if the one who asked 
 the question called the alphabet. She said the reason why 
 she asked people to write down several names on paper, and 
 then point to them till the spirits rapped at the right one, 
 was to give them a chance to watch the countenance and 
 motions of the person, and that in that way they could 
 nearly always guess right. She also explained how they 
 held down and moved tables. (Mrs. Culver here gave some 
 illustration of the tricks.) She told me that all I should have 
 to do to make raps heard on the table, would be to put my 
 foot on the bottom of the table when I rapped ; and that 
 when I Avished to make the raps sound distant on the wall 
 I must make them louder, and direct my own eyes earnestly 
 to the spot where I wished them to be heard. She said if I 
 could put my foot to the bottom of the door, the raps would 
 be heard on the top of the door. 
 
 " Catherine told me that when her feet were held down 
 by the Rochester Committee, the Dutch servant-girl rapped 
 with her knuckles under the floor from the cellar. The girl 
 was instructed to rap whenever she heard their voices calling 
 the spirits. Catherine also showed me how they made the 
 sounds of sawing and planing boards. When I was at 
 Rochester last January, Margaretta told me that when 
 people insisted on seeing her feet and toes, she could pro- 
 duce a few raps with her knees and ankles. 
 
 " Elizabeth Fish (Mr. Fish's daughter), who now lives 
 with her father, was the first one who produced these raps. 
 She accidentally discovered the way of making them by 
 playing with her toes against the foot-board while in bed. 
 Catherine told me that the reason why Elizabeth went west 
 to live with her father, was because she was too conscientious 
 
152 APPENDIX N. 
 
 to become a medium. The Avhole secret was revealed to 
 me, with the understanding that I should practise as a 
 medium when the girls were away. Catherine said that 
 whenever I practised, I had better have my little girl with 
 me, and make folks believe that she was the medium ; 
 ' for,' she said, ' they would never suspect so young a child 
 of any tricks.' After I had obtained the entire secret, I 
 plainly told Catherine that my only object was to find out 
 how these tricks were done, and that I should never go any 
 further in this imposition. She was very much frightened, 
 and said she beheved I meant to tell of it and expose them, 
 and if "I did, she would swear it was a lie. She was so 
 nervous and excited that I had to sleep with her that night. 
 When she was instructing me how to be a medium, she told 
 me how frightened they used to get in New York, for fear 
 somebody would detect them ; and gave me the history of 
 all the tricks they played upon the people there. She said 
 that once Margaretta spoke aloud, and that the whole party 
 believed it was a spirit." 
 
 (Signed) Mrs. Norman Culver. 
 
 Certificate. 
 
 " We hereby certify that Mrs. Culver is one of the most 
 respectable and intelligent ladies in the town of Arcadia. 
 We were present when she made the disclosures. We had 
 heard the same from her before, and we cheerfully bear 
 testimony that there cannot be the slightest doubt of the 
 truth of the whole statement." 
 
 (Signed) C. J. Pomeroy, M.D. . 
 Rev. D. S. Chase. 
 
APPENDIX O. 153 
 
 a corrrction rkspkctfng appendix n, from the axhenj-^um of 
 June 16, 1877. 
 
 THE ROCHESTER RAPPINOS. 
 
 June 12, 1877. 
 
 Having learned from Mr. J. Nevil Maskelyne, from \vlioi=o " Moflern Spirit- 
 nalism'" I obtained the "declaration" of Mrs. Norman Culver (originally 
 pnhlished in tho New York Trihune)^ that the date 1871, wliich he assigned to 
 it, was a misprint for 18.51, I willingly apologize to Mrs. Kate Fox Jencken for 
 the chronological error into which I have been thus led, and for having given 
 additional currency to a document of which, according to her statement, the 
 Tintruh^tworthinoss has been publicly proved ; and I have directed its with- 
 drawal from all the unsold copies of my " Lectures." 
 
 The question of the production of the " raps " by the muscular action of the 
 '■ mediums" is not. however, thus easily disposed of. The report published 
 by Prof. Austin Flint (then of Buffalo, now of New York) and his coadjutors, 
 Drs. Coventry and Lee, after a careful examination of the conditions under 
 which the Rochester rappings occurred. not only proves that they couldbe, but 
 gives strong evidence that they were, so produced by the sisters Fox. And 
 when, in April, 1859, Prof. Schiff demonstrated in his own person, to the French 
 Academy of Medicine, one of the several modes in which these sounds can not. 
 only be called forth, but caused to seem either near or remote, three of the most 
 eminent surgeons in Paris, MM. Jobert de Lamballe, Cloquet, and Velpeau, 
 stated that they had patients who could produce sounds more or less similar, 
 in different joints. It is, therefore, no " theory," but a well-attested fact, that 
 the voluntary muscular contractions of individuals who have trained themselves 
 to the trick can produce an exact imitation of the sounds affirmed by Mrs. 
 Kate Fox Jencken to be " echoes from an unseen world." 
 
 1 may refer those who wish to acquaint themselves with the history of the 
 Rochester rappings to the fourth volume of M. Louis Figuier's •■ Histoire du 
 Merveillouxdane les Temps Modernes" (1861), in w^hich Prof. Austin Flint's 
 report and the proceedings in the French Academy of Medicine are given 
 in faU. 
 
 William B. Carpenter. 
 
 lettei-r^and pointer carefully concealed from her, but the 
 
152 APPENDIX N. 
 
 to become a medium. The whnlp cprr^f Tir^n ».^,.^-,i-,j 
 
APPENDIX O. 153 
 
 APPENDIX O. 
 
 LETTER FROM MR. A. R. WALLACE TO THE EDITOR 
 OF THE 'spectator/ DEC. 23, 1876. 
 
 Sir, — In your comment on Mr. Lewes's letter you seem 
 to imply that the experiment described may prove imposture, 
 but tliat Professor De Morgan's experiment was equally 
 decisive against imposture. Will you allow me very briefly 
 to point out that the alleged exposure proves nothing without 
 assuming the very fact at issue — that Mrs. Hayden herself 
 caused the raps following the indications given by the person 
 who pointed to the letters of tlie alphabet? For let us 
 assume, on the other hand, that the raps were, as alleged, 
 caused by invisible beings, perhaps not superior in in- 
 telligence to Mrs. Hayden, and equally liable to be affected 
 by insult or impulse, and that these beings could read, mo7-e 
 or less imperfectly^ the questioner's mind. Nonsense ques- 
 tions were asked these intelligences, and absurd or contra- 
 dictory answers were sought to be- obtained by dwelling on 
 certain letters. These absurd answers were obtained. Tl is 
 is consistent with the supposition on two theories. Either 
 the intelligence could read only the questioner's active 
 desire for a certain answer while pointing to the letters, and 
 accordingly gave that answer ; or, if it were able also to 
 perceive the question (though less vivid in the questioner's 
 mind at the moment), it might well adopt the human prin- 
 ciples of answering what would be impertinent questions in 
 the only way they deserved an answer. It is a fact within 
 my own knowledge, and it is well-known to all spiritualists, 
 that both kinds of answers are obtained in pri\ate circles 
 where any imposture is out of the question. Professor De 
 Morgan's experiment on the other hand absolutely precluded 
 imposture on Mrs. Hayden's part, since not only were the 
 letters and pointer carefully concealed from her, but the 
 
154 APPENDIX P. 
 
 answer, though correct, was in words which tlie Professor 
 was not expecting. The one experiment was purely nega- 
 tive and inconclusive, the other positive ; and I cannot 
 understand how so logical a mind as that of Mr. G. H. 
 Lewes can put the two results even in the category, much 
 less allow the negative evidence to prevail. — I am, Sir, &c., 
 
 Alfred R. Wallace. 
 
 APPENDIX P. 
 
 " We were requested by a lady who had known Mr. Foster 
 in America, to accompany her and her son-in-law (an 
 eminent London Physician) on a visit to Mr. Foster, who 
 had arrived in London only a few days previously. We 
 were not introduced to him by name, and we do not think 
 that he could have had any opportunity of knowing our 
 person. Nevertheless, he not only answered, in a variety of 
 modes, the questions we put to him respecting the time and 
 cause of the death of several of our departed friends and 
 relatives, whose names we had written down on slips of 
 paper which had been folded-up and crumpled into pellets 
 before being placed in his hands ; but he brought out names 
 and dates correctly, in large red letters, on his bare arm, the 
 redness being produced by the turgescence of the minute 
 vessels of the skin, and passing away after a few minutes, 
 like a blush. We must own to have been strongly impressed 
 at the time by this performance ; but on subsequently think- 
 ing it over, we could see that Mr. Foster's divining power 
 was probably derived from his having acquired the foculty 
 of interpreting the movements of the top of a pen or pencil, 
 though the point and what was written by it was hid from 
 his sight, with the aid of an observing power sharpened by 
 practice, which enabled him to guide his own movements 
 
APPENDIX P. 155 
 
 by the indications unconsciously given by ourselves of the 
 answers we expected. For though we were fully armed with 
 the knowledge which had been acquired of the source from 
 which Mrs. Hayden drew her inspiration, and did our ut- 
 most to repress every sign of anticipation, we came, on re- 
 llection, to an assured conviction that Mr. Foster had been 
 keen-sighted enough to detect such signs, notwithstanding 
 our attempt to baffle him. For, having asked him the month 
 of the death of a friend, whose name had previously appeared 
 in red letters on his arm, and the year of whose death had 
 also been correctly indicated in another way, he desired us 
 to take up the alphabet-card and to point to the successive 
 letters. This we did, as we believe, with pendulum-like 
 regularity ; nevertheless, distinct raps were heard at the 
 letters j, u. When, however, on the next repetition, we 
 came to L, M, N, Mr. Foster was obviously baffled. He 
 directed us to try-back two or three times, and at last con- 
 fessed that he could not certainly tell whether the month was 
 June ox July. The secret of this was, that we did not our- 
 selves recollect. 
 
 " Wishing to clear up the matter further, we called on Mr. 
 Foster, revealed ourselves to him in propria peisoJict, and 
 asked him if he would object to meet a few scientific in- 
 vestigators, who should be allowed to subject his powers to 
 fair tests. As he professed his readiness to do so, we 
 brought together such a meeting at our own house ; and 
 previously to Mr. Foster's arrival, we explained to our 
 friends the arrangements we proposed. One of these was, 
 that one of the party should sit outside the ' circle,' and 
 should devote himself to observing and recording all that 
 passed, without taking any part whatever in the performance. 
 Another was, that instead of writing down names on slips of 
 paper, whilst sitting at the table within Mr. Foster's view, we 
 should write them at a side-table, with our backs turned to 
 him. On explaining these arrangements to Mr. Foster, he 
 8 
 
156 APPENDIX P. 
 
 immediately said that the first could not be permitted, for 
 that every person present 77111st form part of the circle. To 
 the second he made no objection. After handing him our 
 slips of paper carefully folded-up, we took our seats at the 
 table, and waited for the announcement of spiritual visitors. 
 The only one, however, who presented himself during an 
 hour's sea7ice, was the spirit of our own old master, whose 
 name Mr. Foster might very readily have learned previously, 
 but about whom he could give no particulars whatever. 
 Avt 07ie of the 7iaines W7'itte7i 07i the pape7's was revealed. 
 
 " The patience of our friends bemg exhausted, they took 
 their leave ; but as Mr. Foster's carriage had been ordered 
 for a later hour, we requested him to sit down again with 
 the members of our own family. ' Now,' we said, ' that these 
 incredulous philosophers are gone, perhaps the spirits will 
 favour us with a visit.' We purposely followed Jiis lead, as 
 on our first interview, and everything went on as successfully 
 as on that occasion ; until, whilst the name of a relative we 
 had recently lost was being spelled out on our alphabet-card, 
 the raps sudde7ily ceased on the interposition of a large music- 
 book, which was set-up at a preconcerted signal so as to hide 
 the top as well as the bottom of our pointer from Mr. 
 Foster's eyes. Nothing could more conclusively prove that 
 Mr. Foster's knowledge was derived from observation of the 
 movements of the pointer, although he could only see the 
 portion of it not hidden by the card, which was so held as 
 to conceal the lower part of it ; and nothing could be a 
 better illustration of the principle of 'unconscious ideo- 
 motor action,' then the fact, that ivhilst we were 77iost ca7-e- 
 fully abstaining f7V7n any pause or look fro7n which he 7night 
 de7'ive guidance^ ive had e7iablcd hi7n to divine the answer we 
 expected. The trick by which the red letters were produced 
 was discovered by the inquiries of our medical friends." — 
 {Qiiarte7-ly Review^ October 187 1, p. 332.) 
 
APPENDIX Q. 157 
 
 APPENDIX Q. 
 
 MR. BRAID ON THE INFLUENCE OF SUGGESTION AND 
 EXPECTANCY. 
 
 " The most curious and important fact of all, however, is 
 this, — that by engendering a state of mental concentration, 
 by a simple act of sustained attention, fixed upon some unex- 
 citing and empty thing,—' for poverty of object engenders 
 abstraction,' — the faculties of the minds of some patients are 
 thereby thrown out of gear, {i.e., their ordinary relations are 
 changed,) so that the higher faculties— reason, comparison, 
 and will, become dethroned from their supremacy, and give 
 place and power to imagination, (which now careers in un- 
 bridled liberty,) easy credulity, and dociUty or passive 
 obedience ; so that, even whilst apparently wide awake, and 
 conscious of all around, they become susceptible of being in- 
 fluenced and controlled entirely by the suggestions of others, 
 upon whom their attention is fixed. In fact, such subjects, 
 are in a sub-hypnotic condition, — in that intermediate state 
 between sleeping and waking, when the mind becomes waver- 
 ing, the attention off duty, or engrossed with a predominant 
 idea, so that, in reality, the subjects are only half conscious of 
 what is passing around ; and their minds, therefore, become 
 easily imposed upon by any suggestion, audibly expressed or 
 visibly exhibited before them. Thus they may be made to 
 perceive, and mistake for realities, whatever mental illusions 
 or ideas are suggested to them. In common parlance they 
 see and fee/ as real, and they consider themselves irresistibly 
 or ijivoluntarily fixed, or spell-bound, or impelled to perform 
 whatever 7nay be said or signified by the other party upon whom 
 their attention has beeome involimtarily and vividly riveted, 
 until a new idea has been suggested, by which the spell is 
 broken, and the subject is left in a condition again to be 
 subjugated and controlled by other suggestions of his tern- 
 
158 APPENDIX Q. 
 
 porary fascinator. This is just similar to what we see occurring 
 to anyone spontaneously engaged in deep abstraction, who 
 is instantaneously aroused to consciousness of all around by 
 a tap on the shoulder, or by a word sharply addressed to 
 him. 
 
 " It requires considerable tact to manage this, adroitly and 
 successfully, with some patients ; for the will and belief of 
 certain subjects can only be successfully subjugated and con- 
 trolled by an earnest and energetic, and confident and 
 authoritative manner, on the part of the operator ; such as 
 by his insisti7ig that such and such must be the case, according 
 to his audible suggestions, or visible manoeuvres for influenc- 
 ing the subjects through the power of sympathy and imita- 
 tion. I have had ample evidence to convince «ie of the fact, 
 that, in cases where these waking illusions and delusions 
 could not be excited by giving the suggestions in an ap- 
 parently doubting tone of voice, or with a hesitating manner, 
 they became quite efficient for the purpose, the instant I 
 assumed a commanding and confident tone of voice and 
 deportment. By these means the Reason and Will become 
 temporarily paralysed ; they lose their freedom of action, 
 through the mind being so much engrossed by the suggested 
 thought, as to allow every idea which has been vividly and 
 energetically addressed to such individual, to assume all the 
 force of present reality, — just as we know to occur spon- 
 taneously, in case oi fnonomania and delirium trcjuens." (See 
 Braid On Magic, Witchcraft, Animal Afagnetism, Hypnotism^ 
 and Electro-Biology, 1852, pp. 65-67.) 
 
PRINCIPLES 
 
 OF 
 
 MENTAL PHYSIOLOGY, 
 
 Their Applications to the Training and Discipline of the Mind, atid 
 the Study of its Morbid Conditions. 
 
 By WILLIAM CARPENTER, M. D., LL.D. 
 
 I vol., i2mo. 737 pages. Price, $3.00. 
 
 «* Dr. Carpenter has won his reputation as a physiologist, largely 
 from the clearness of his expositions, and the present work shows that 
 his capacity in this respect is still vigorous. Its most scientific parts 
 are attractive reading, and the extensive array of personal instances 
 and incidents, which illustrate his positions, gives great fascination to 
 the volume. 
 
 "It is a hard book to lay down when once entered upon, and Dr. 
 Carpenter may be congratulated upon having contributed so fresh a 
 book upon such an important subject." — Popular Science Monthly. 
 
 " Is a profound and learned work, which goes to the very bottom of 
 the problems of Life and Eternity."— i?(?j/^« Commonwealth. 
 
 "The work is probably the ablest exposition of the subject which 
 has been given to the world, and goes far to establish a new system of 
 mental philosophy upon a much broader and more substantial basis 
 than it has heretofore stood."— 6"/?. Louis Democrat. 
 
 "The work is a revision and expansion of the author's well-known 
 work bearing the same name, published over twenty years ago, and 
 so popular as to reach half a dozen editions." — Cincinnati Gazette. 
 
 D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers, 
 
 549 "S: 551 Broadway, N. Y. 
 
opinions of the Press on the " International Scientific Series.'' 
 
 IX. 
 
 Responsibility in Mental Disease. 
 
 By HENRY MAUDSLEY, M. D., 
 
 Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians ; Professor of Medical Jurisprudence 
 in University College, London. 
 
 I vol., i2mo. Cloth Price, $1.50. 
 
 " Having lectured in a medical college on Mental Disease, this book has been a 
 feast to us. It handles a great subject in a masterly manner, and, in our judgment, 
 the positions taken by the author are correct and well sustained.^ In his second cjiap- 
 ter he has well marked out the border-line between sanity and insanity, speaks of the 
 prophets of the Old Testament, the epileptic nature of Mahomet's visions, crime and 
 insanity, epileptic insanity, etc. Here we can bear testimony to the truth of his re- 
 marks from professional experience, having had probably more epileptic patients than 
 any other physician of our day to treat." — Pastor and People. 
 
 " The author is at home in his subject, and presents his views in an almost singu- 
 larly clear and satisfactory manner. . . . The volume is a valuable contribution to one 
 of the most difficult, and at the same time one of the most important subjects of inves- 
 tigation at the present day." — N. V. Observer, 
 
 " It is a work profound and searching, and abounds in wisdom." — Pittsburg Com- 
 vtercial. 
 
 " Handles the important topic with masterly power, and its suggestions are prac- 
 tical and of great value." — Providence Press. 
 
 " Dr. Maudsley's book appears to us timely and valuable as bringing within the 
 reach of every person the facts which, to the multitude, are often inaccessible."— 
 Chicago Tribune. 
 
 "Dr, Maudsley's treatise cannot but have an influence on the jurisprudence of the 
 future with respect to the insane." — Buffalo Courier. 
 
 "A compact presentation of those facts and principles which require to be taken 
 into account in estimating human responsibility." — Popular Science Monthly. 
 
 " The International Scientific Series, whose merits have commanded such 
 a prompt and extended recognition by the reading and thinking public, has its scope 
 considerably enlarged by the publication of this, its latest volume. The treatise of 
 Prof Maudsley relates to a subject of peculi.ir interest, and which to eveiy one has 
 more or less importance. How far insanity, whether partial or entire, affects the re- 
 sponsibility of the sufferer, is ably argued, the importance of the question wap-anting 
 tlie length of the treatise, which the admirable style of the author renders of constant 
 interest throughout." — Bostofi Post. 
 
 " The author has evidently devoted much study to his theme, which he discusses 
 with commendable common-sense. His stylo is clear and his essay is decidedly inter- 
 esting." — The Cultivator a7id Country Gentleman. 
 
 " The style is clear and vigorous. In the chapter on Law and Insanity the author 
 commends himself, by his acute criticisms and judicial deliverances, to the attention of 
 lawyers." — 'The Christian Era. 
 
 D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers, 549 & 551 Broadway, N. Y. 
 
No more stirring chronicle o/ adventure was ever penned." — London Quarterly. 
 
 NEW LANDS WITHIN THE ARCTIC CIRCLE: 
 
 NARRATIVE OF THE DISCOVERIES OF THE AUSTRIAN SHIP 
 TEGETTHOFF IN iZj^-'j^. 
 
 By JTJIL.ITJS FJ^YER, 
 
 ONE OF THE COMMANDERS OF THE EXPEDITION. 
 
 Containing upward of One Hundred Illustrations from Drawings by 
 
 the Author, engraved by J. D. Cooper, a Colored Frontispiece 
 
 and Route Maps, and Preface comparing the Results 
 
 of the English and Austrian Expeditions. 
 
 I vol., vtediu7n Bvo Cloth, extra, $3 50. 
 
 "We advise all who desire to enjoy a genuine and unalloyed pleasure to read his 
 book, which will bear more than one perusal. We are mistaken if it does not take rank 
 with the best of our English arctic narratives, and become a permanent favorite with 
 old and young. The well-executed illustrations from the pencil of the author add 
 greatly to tlie value and attractions of the book." — Lo7idoft Times, 
 
 " Lieutenant Payer has written its story in a style not surpassed in fascinating in- 
 terest and scientific value by any of those old narratives that are still the delight of all 
 who love to read of the adventures of daring men." — Nature. 
 
 "No arctic navigator, since the days of William Barentz, has had a more startling 
 tale to tell, and not one has told it better."— A themeuni. 
 
 " Cold-blooded, indeed, must the reader be who can study these volumes without a 
 thrill of almost too intense excitement. For literary power, the story of the Tegetthoff 
 stands in the very front rank of arctic narrative." — Graphic. 
 
 " The result of the voyage is given by Lieutenant Payer in a magnificent work. 
 . . . No more stirring chronicle of adventure was ever penned. ... It is impossible 
 to avoid recording our tribute of admiration to the heroic endurance with which, after 
 abandoning their ship, they struggled for months across a treacherous floating desert 
 of ice in their return home." — London Qttarterly. ' 
 
 " This remarkable adventure, the record of which stands, in many respects, alone 
 amid the stories of arctic discovery. , . . The book presents a singularly vivid picture 
 of a marvelous expedition." — Edinburgh Review. 
 
 " M. Payer tells his story with the simple directness of a man who knows that his 
 unvarnished tale has power in itself to move the reader. There is throughout his nar- 
 rative a charm rarely to be met with in the tales of arctic adventure and discovery."— 
 Londott Spectator. _ i. 1 • -i 
 
 " It is one of the most interesting tales of personal experiences, of hardship, toil, 
 and peril, of valiant endurance and performance, to be found in the records of seafaring 
 life and enterprise. Lieutenant Payer relates it altogether well, simply and modestly, 
 without any self-glorification, but fully setting forth, in justice to his comrades and 
 shipmates of all ranks, their actual labors and privations." — London Sat. Review. 
 
 New York: D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers. 
 
RECENT PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 ELECTRICITY AND THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH. 
 
 By George B. Prescott. With Illustrations, i vol., 8vo. Cloth, 
 $5.00. 
 
 " The object which has been aimed at in the preparation of the present work has 
 been to furnish a treatise on the subject of Electricity and the Telegraph, which should 
 present a comprehensive and accurate summary of the present advanced state of the 
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 merit, which have been freely employed wherever they could be made to serve a useful 
 purpose in the elucidation of the text." — Extract from Pre/ace. 
 
 MAJOLICA AND FAYENCE, 
 
 Italian, Sicilian, Majorcan, Hispano-Moresque, and Persian. By 
 Arthur Beckwith. With Photo-engraved Illustrations, i vol., 
 i2mo. $1.50. 
 
 " The interest shown by visitors in the ceramic display at the International Exhi- 
 bition of 1876, and the indications of a growing appreciation of this phase of Art, led me 
 to undertake to give some account of the development of Majolica and Fayence, the 
 localities and distinguishing characteristics of its various manufactures, the subjects rep- 
 resented on many pieces, and a description of examples chosen for illustration, chiefly 
 from the collection of Signor Castellani." — Extract from Pre/ace. 
 
 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE: 
 
 A Series of Detached Essays, Addresses, and Reviews. By John 
 TYiVDALL, F. R. S. Fifth edition. 625 pages. i2mo. 82.50. 
 
 The fifth edition of the "Fragments of Science" now appears gready enlarged by 
 recendy-published articles, and containing 193 pages of matter not found in the former 
 American edition. Prof. Tyndall has rearranged the work, grouping together the more 
 scientific articles in Part I. and the controversial discussions in Part II., to which there 
 is a special introduction. 
 
 New Yokk: D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers. 
 
RECENT PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 TWO WOMEN. 
 
 A Poem. By Constance Fenimore Woolson. i vol., i2mo. Cloth, 
 
 $1.00. 
 
 " A story in verse, which enchains the attention with fascinating power .... pro- 
 duces an intensely emotional effect upon the reader, and at the same time an involuntary 
 tribute to the originality and noteworthy ability of the vix\\.tix." — t'rovideiice Journnl. 
 
 " One of the most powerful pieces of magazine-writing we have seen in a long time. 
 . . . Shows a far-reachina; knowledge of human nature, a dramatic grasp and force, and 
 a power of description and expression seldom seen." — Detroit Post. 
 
 GATHERINGS FROM AN ARTIST'S PORTFOLIO. 
 
 By James E. Freeman. i6ino. Cloth, $1.25. 
 
 Mr. James E. Freeman, an American artist who has resided some thirty years in 
 Rome, gives in this volume a most entertaining selection of reminiscences, including 
 anecdotes of many of the most distinguished artists and literary people who have lived 
 in or visited Rome during the period of his sojourn there, with many interesting chap- 
 ters graphically descriptive of art-life in Italy. The book is eminently enjoyable to all 
 classes of readers, and especially entertaining to artists. Nothing more gossipy, bright, 
 and readable, has recently appeared. 
 
 SIX LE0TUEE3 ON LIGHT, 
 
 Delivered in America in i872-'73. By John Tyndall, F. R. S. Sec- 
 ond edition, i vol., i2mo. Cloth, $1.50. 
 
 " Professor Tyndall's American Lectures form incomparably the best popular ex- 
 position of the wave-theory of light to be found in any language, and for this purpose it 
 will long hold its place as a standard book. He has carefully revised it, made some im- 
 portant additions, put it in larger type, and substituted new and superior illustrations, 
 so that the edition which now appears has very much the aspect of a new work." — 
 Popular Science Monthly, 
 
 PETITES CAUSERIES; 
 
 Or, ELEMENTARY ENGLISH AND FRENCH CONVERSA- 
 TIONS. For Young Students and Home Teaching. To which are 
 added Models of Juvenile Correspondence, in French and English. 
 By AcHiLLE MoTTEAU. With numerous Illustrations, i vol., 
 i2mo. $1.25, 
 
 This volume is intended to enable persons to talk French, and to understand those 
 who speak that elegant language. No rules of grammar arc given, but, if each is care- 
 fully studied, never leaving it until quite sure of having acquired the pronunciation of 
 the words and knowing the meaning of the sentences, rapid progress will be made. 
 
 New York; D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers. 
 
RECENT PTJBLICATIOISrS. 
 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION, 
 
 AND OTHER POLITICAL ESSAYS. By Walter Bagehot, 
 
 author of "Physics and Politics." Latest revised edition, i vol., 
 
 i2mo. Cloth. Price, $2.00. 
 
 " With the author's inclination and capacity to regard public questions in their sci- 
 entific aspects, many readers are already familiar through his suggestive volume entitled 
 ' Physics and Politics.' ' The English Constitution ' is a work of the same quality, and 
 treats its subjects very much with reference to the principles of human nature and the 
 natural laws of human society. It is a free disquisition on English political experience ; 
 an acute, critical, and dispassionate discussion of English institutions, designed to show, 
 how they operate, and to point out their defects and advantages. The writer is not so 
 much a partisan or an advocate, as a cool, philosophical inquirer, with large knowledge, 
 clear insight, independent opinions, and great freedom from the bias of what he terms 
 that 'territorial sectarianism called patriotism,' His criticism of the faults of the Eng- 
 lish system is searching and trenchant, and his appreciation of its benefits and usefulness 
 is cordial, discriminating, and wise. The book, indeed, is full of instructive episodes, 
 and sagacious reflections on the springs of action in human nature, the exercise of power 
 by individuals or political bodies, the adaptation of institutions to the qualities and cir- 
 cumstances of the different classes who live under them, and numerous points of politi- 
 cal philosophy, which are applicable everj'where, and have an interest for all students of 
 political and social affairs." — Extract fro7n pre/ace. 
 
 THE VARIOUS CONTEH AXCES 
 
 BY WHICH 
 
 ORCHIDS ARE FERTILIZED BY INSECTS. 
 
 By Charles Darwin, M. A. Second edition, revised. With Illus- 
 trations. I vol., i2mo. Cloth. Price, $1.75. 
 
 " Mr. Darwin has prepared a new edition of his work on the fertilization of orchids 
 by insects, which was published in 1862, and has been for some time out of print. He 
 has, during the interval, received a great deal of information on the subject from vari- 
 ous correspondents, and has also continued his own researches ; and he has used the 
 materials thus obtained in remodeling the original work. The object which the writer has 
 in view is, as he explains, not only to show how wonderfully complex and perfect arc the 
 contrivances by which orchids are fertilized with pollen brought by insects from a dis- 
 tinct plant, but also to support his theory that ' it is an almost universal law of N»ature 
 that the higher organic beings require an occasional cross with another individual ; or, 
 which is the same thing, that no hermaphrodite fertilizes itself for a perpetuity of gener- 
 ations.' " — Saturday Review, 
 
 BLACK SPIRITS AND WHITE, 
 
 By Frances Eleanor Trollope, author of "a Charming Fellow," 
 
 etc. I vol., 8vo. Illustrated. Paper covers. Price, 75 cents. 
 
 " It has all the rapid movement of a play, and is at the same time full of piquant 
 character-study. The personages of the story have life and thorough individuality — 
 there is not a puppet among them. It has been said of one of them— the American 
 'medium'— that he is simply a caricature; but those who have seen a certain erratic 
 countryman of ours will recognize many of his curious traits."— iV. Y. Tribune. 
 
 New York: D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers. 
 
RECENT PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 GAETH. 
 
 A Novel. By Julian Hawthorne, author of " Bressant," " Saxon Studies," etc. i 
 vol., 8vo. Paper covers, $1. do; cloth, $1.50. 
 
 " 'Garth,' is Mr. Julian Hawthorne's most elaborate and pretentious book. It is on 
 many accounts also his best book, though it contains nothing so good as the character 
 of the hero in ' Bressant.' At least his genius is unmistakable. And we are disposed 
 to venture the suggestion that, if ' Garth ' had not been a serial, it would have been more 
 compact and closely written, and so its situations more effective, its characters better 
 sustained." — New York World. 
 
 THE AET OF ELECTEO-METALLUEGY. 
 
 Including all Known Processes of Electro-Deposition. Ey G. Gore, LL. D., F. R. S. 
 I vol., i2mo. 391 pages. Illustrated. $2.50. 
 "I have endeavored not only to make the book a treatise on the practical art of 
 Electro-Metallurgy, but also to include an outline of the science of electro-chemistry, 
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 as perfect as I could ; the most complete portions are those which treat of the common 
 methods of silvering, giidmg, moulding; the deposition of copper, nickel, brass, iron, 
 and tm; the special defrails of the art; and the accounts of such experiments and pro- 
 cesses with the less common metals, as scientific investigators and practical inventors 
 may be likely to further examine or practically apply." — Extract from Preface. 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF MACHINE-DESIGN. 
 
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 of the Parts of Machines, and a Collection of Rules for Machine-Design. By 
 W. Cawthorne Unvvin. i vol., izmo. Illustrated. $1.50. 
 "No labor has been spared in condensing into the smallest compass the informa- 
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 I vol., 8vo. Paper covers, $1.00 ; cloth $1.50. 
 " After Many Days " is marked bj' those characteristics that have made the name 
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 South and partly in England, while its narrative exhibits notable variety of incident 
 and strength of interest. 
 
 NEW LANDS WITHIN THE AEOTIO CIECLE: 
 
 Narrative of the Discoveries of the Austrian Ship Tegetthoff in i%-j2-j^. By Jl'LUS 
 
 Payer, one of the Commanders of the Expedition. Containing upward of 100 
 
 Illustrations from Drawings by the Author, engraved by J. D. Cooper, a Colored 
 
 Frontispiece and Route Maps, and Preface comparing Results of the English and 
 
 Austrian Expeditions. One vol., medium 8vo., cloth, extra, $3 50. 
 
 "We advise all who desire to enjoy a genuine and unalloyed pleasure to read his 
 
 book, which will bear more than one perusal. We are mistaken if it does not take rank 
 
 with the best of our English arctic narratives, and become a permanent favorite with 
 
 old and young. The well-executed illustrations from the pencil of the author add 
 
 greatly to the value and attractions of the book." — Times. 
 
 New York: D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers. 
 
INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC SERIES. 
 
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