PREFACE.

If the critics undertake to determine, by any recognized rules of art, to what class of literary productions the following unpretending work belongs, I think they will be sorely puzzled. I am sure I am puzzled myself to say what it is. It is not a novel; it is not a romance; it is not a biography of a real individual; it is not a dissertation, an essay, or a regular treatise; and yet it perhaps has some elements of them all, thrown together in just such a way as best suited my convenience, or my purpose.

I wanted to write a book, easy to write and not precisely hard to read, on the new superstition, or old superstition under a new name, exciting just now no little attention at home and abroad; and I chose such a literary form as I—not, properly speaking, a literary man—could best manage, and which would afford me the most facilities for bringing distinctly before the reader the various points vito which I wished to direct his attention. If the critics think that I have chosen badly, they are at liberty to bestow upon the author as much of the castigation which, in his capacity of Reviewer, he has for many years been in the habit of bestowing upon others, as they think proper. I have thought it but fair to give those whom I may have offended by my own criticisms in another place, an opportunity to pay their debts and wipe off old scores.

The book, though affecting some degree of levity, is serious in its aims, and truthful in its statements. There is no fiction in it, save its machinery. What is given as fact, is fact, or at least so regarded by the author. The facts narrated, or strictly analogous facts, I have either seen myself, or given on what I regard as ample evidence. The theory presented as their explanation, and the reasoning by which it is sustained, speak for themselves, and are left to the judgment of the reader.

The connection of spirit-rapping, or the spirit-manifestations, with modern philanthropy, visionary reforms, socialism, and revolutionism, is not an imagination of my own. It is historical, and asserted by the Spiritists, or Spiritualists themselves, as any one may satisfy himself who can have the patience to look through their Library. I have endeavored viito be scrupulously exact in all my statements and representations in this respect. The shafts which the author shoots at random may perhaps hit some well-meaning persons who get crotchets in their heads, or astride of hobbies; but they are not poisoned with malice, and will titillate the skin, rather than penetrate the flesh.

I have not aimed at originality, or at displaying my erudition in the Black Art. I have certainly read some on the subject, and at one period of my life made myself acquainted with more “deviltry” than ever did or ever will do me any good. I have however drawn very little from “forbidden” sources. In writing, I have used freely a recent French work, from which I have taken the larger portion of my facts, and many of my arguments, although I had previously studied the subject for myself, had learned the same facts, with one or two exceptions, from other sources, and had adopted the same solution. The work I refer to is entitled, Pneumatologie des Esprits et de leurs Manifestations fluidiques. By the Marquis Etudes de M——. Paris, 1853. There are some views, not unimportant, in this work, which I am not prepared to accept; but, upon the whole, it is the only really sensible and scientific work I have seen on the subject, and I viiifreely confess that I have done little more than transfer its substance to my pages.

The volume when it was begun was intended to be published anonymously, but my publishers have preferred to issue it with the name of the author. I think they have judged unwisely, but as they ought to know their own trade better than I, and as there is nothing in it that I am particularly ashamed of or unwilling to avow, I cheerfully comply with their request, and send it out with my name, to make or mar its fortune. If it tend in any degree to throw light on the dark facts of history, to check superstition, to rebuke unreasoning scepticism, and to recall the age to faith in the Gospel of our Lord, the purpose, the serious purpose, for which it was written will be answered, and I shall be content, whatever reception it may otherwise meet from the public.

Boston, August 11, 1854.

CHAPTER I. THE FIRST LESSON.

My days are numbered; I am drawing near to the close of my earthly pilgrimage, and I must soon take my final departure,—whither, I dread to think. But before I go I would leave a brief record of some incidents in my worse than unprofitable life. A few who have known me, and will have the charity to breathe a prayer at my grave, may be glad to possess it; and others of my countrymen, who know not what to think of the marvellous phenomena daily and hourly exhibited in their midst, or are vainly striving to explain them on natural principles, may find it neither uninteresting nor uninstructive.

Of my exterior life I have not much to record, for though few have played a more active or important part in the great events of the past few years, my name has rarely been connected with them before 2the public. I was born in a small town in Western New York. My parents were honest agriculturists from Connecticut, and descended from ancestors who, with Hooker, founded the colony of Hartford. They were among the early settlers of what used to be called the “Holland Purchase,” and, till emigrating to the new world west of the Genesee, were rigid Puritans. Like most emigrants from the land of “steady habits,” they were intelligent, moral, industrious, and economical, and, as a matter of course, soon prospered in this world’s goods, and became able to give their only son the best education the State could furnish, and to leave him a competent estate. I made my preparatory studies at Batavia, and entered, at seventeen, the Freshman class of Union College, Schenectady. I remained at college four years, a diligent, if not a brilliant student, and

graduated at the close with the highest standing, and the general love and esteem of my classmates.

My early predilection was for the mathematical and physical sciences. The moral and intellectual sciences were not much to my taste. I took no great interest in them. They struck me as vague, uncertain, and unprofitable. I preferred what M. Comte has since called Positive Philosophy. I soon mastered mathematics, mechanics, and physics, as far as they were taught in our college, but I found my greatest delight in chemistry, which, by its subtle analyses, seemed to promise me an approach to the vital principle and to the essences of things.

3On leaving college I studied—not very profoundly—medicine, and took my degree, less with a view to professional practice, in which I never engaged, than with a view to general science. After taking my degree as Doctor of Medicine, I resumed and extended my college studies, entered largely into the study of natural history, physical geography, zoölogy, geology, mineralogy, and indeed all the ’ologies, then so fashionable that one must have a smattering of them if he would woo successfully his sweetheart. I paid some attention to Gall and Spurzheim’s new science of Phrenology, when Spurzheim visited this country, where he died, and was much interested in it till I had the misfortune to listen to a course of lectures in its exposition and defence, by George Combe, Esq., the great Scottish phrenologist. That course upset me, and I have since abandoned Phrenology, save so far as I find it taught by Plato in his Timæus, and only laughed at its pretensions and its adherents.

I was arrested, for a moment, by Boston Transcendentalism, but I could not make much of it. Its chiefs told me that I was not spiritual enough to appreciate it, and that I was too much under the despotism of the understanding to be able to rise to those empyrean regions where the soul asserts her freedom, and sports with infinite delight in all the luxury of the unintelligible. I thought they talked metaphysics, what neither their hearers nor themselves could understand; and finding myself 4very little enlightened by their intelligible unintelligibility, their dark utterances, and their Orphic sayings, I gave them up, and returned to my laboratory.

About 1836, I made the acquaintance of Dr. P——, or, as he claimed to be, the Marquis de P——, a native of one of the French West India Islands, but brought up and educated at Paris, where he had been a Saint-Simonian, and a chief of the savans of the new religion. The decision of the French courts in 1833, that Saint-Simonism was not a religion, and therefore that its chiefs were not priests, and entitled to a salary from the state, dispersed the new sect, and he soon after came to the United States, and commenced, though with a very imperfect knowledge of our language, and very little facility in speaking it, a course of lectures in several of our eastern cities, on Mesmerism, or, as he preferred to call it, Animal Magnetism. His appearance was by no means prepossessing, and his manners, though unpretending, were very far from indicating that exquisite grace and polish which are supposed, for what reason I know not, to be peculiar to the Frenchman; but he was a serious, earnest-minded man, who in several branches of science had made solid studies. I knew him well, and

esteemed him much.

At that time I had paid not much attention to Mesmerism. I had heard of Mesmer indeed, of his extraordinary pretensions, and the wonderful phenomena 5which he professed to produce by his rod and tub; but I had supposed that the matter had been put at rest for all sensible persons by the famous report of the French Academy in 1784, signed, among others, by Bailly the astronomer, and our own Franklin. I supposed that every scientific man acquiesced in the conclusion of that report, that the extraordinary phenomena exhibited by magnetism were to be ascribed to the imagination, and that from the date of that report magnetism had ceased to occupy the attention of the scientific. I was therefore surprised, nay, scandalized, to find a man of real science, and, as I wished to believe, of real worth, professing faith in what I had been led to regard as an exploded humbug, and which, at the very best, could have no practical utility beyond illustrating the deceptive power of the imagination, and the sad consequences which might result to those weak-minded people who become dupes to

their own disordered fancy.

Dr. P—— assured me that I was mistaken both as to the bearing and as to the effect of the famous report of the French Academy. That report, he said, concedes the reality of the mesmeric phenomena, and only declares that the assertion of Mesmer, that they are produced by means of a subtle fluid analogous to electricity or magnetism, was not proven or demonstrated by the experiments the commission witnessed; which gives no uneasiness to any animal magnetist in our day, because now no one pretends 6to explain those phenomena by means of such a fluid. It is true, he said, the commission, in their published report, assert that the phenomena are to be explained by the imagination; but in a private report, addressed to the king, they say, that “it is impossible not to recognize in them a great power which agitates and subjects the patients, and of which the magnetizer appears to be the depositary.” This, contended Dr. P——, is by no means compatible with the theory which ascribes them to the imagination, for that theory supposes the cause that

produces them to be in the magnetized, since it is to their imagination, not to that of the magnetizer, that they are to be ascribed; but in this secret report, the power which produces them is assumed to be in the magnetizer, “of which,” it says, “he who magnetizes seems to be the depositary.” For these, as well as other reasons, he said, the report of the Academy was not regarded by magnetists as any authority against Animal Magnetism as understood and practised at the present time.

Moreover, he assured me, that the report of the Academy had not settled the question, or seriously checked the cultivation or the progress of Animal Magnetism. It had at no moment ceased to be studied and practised, chiefly for its therapeutic effects, and, as he proved to me, was at the time firmly held and practised by large numbers of the most upright, benevolent, learned, and scientific members of the medical profession in France, Germany, 7and Great Britain. It had continued to make progress, and was now very generally held and respected on the continent of Europe. If I would not be behind my age, if I would not remain ignorant of a very curious and interesting class of phenomena, I must, he insisted, investigate and make myself acquainted with Animal Magnetism. I should do it as a lover of science; I should do it more especially as a lover of my race, as a friend of humanity; for I might rest assured that Animal Magnetism is the most facile and powerful means ever yet discovered of solacing, and to a great extent curing, a thousand ills that flesh is heir to.

My curiosity, I confess, was excited, and I resolved to investigate the subject. Dr. P—— had picked up, somewhere in Rhode Island, a somnambulist, an honest, simple-minded young woman, of no great strength of intellect, and very little education or knowledge. She was sickly, and suffering from some nervous affection. He had found her very susceptible to the mesmeric influence, and he made her the subject of numerous experiments. He had brought her, in the winter of 1836-7, to Boston, and there exhibited her to his class. Spending that winter in the same city, I consented one afternoon to be present at his experiments. There were some twenty or thirty gentlemen present on the occasion, mostly lawyers, physicians, ministers, and literary and scientific gentlemen of distinction, all disbelievers in Mesmerism, 8and on the alert to detect the least sign of deception or complicity.

The Doctor introduced his patient, who took her seat in an arm-chair placed in the centre of the room, and, without any visible sign from Dr. P——, was in a few minutes apparently fast asleep. Her breathing was regular, her pulse natural, and her sleep sound and tranquil. Was it sleep? It was, as far as we could ascertain, and sleep accompanied by complete insensibility. We resorted to every imaginable contrivance to awaken her. One tickled her nose with a feather, another shook her with all his might, another discharged a pistol close to her ear, another stuck pins and needles into her flesh,—all without the least effect. There was no quivering or shrinking, no muscular contraction, and to the rudest proofs she was as insensible as a corpse. We all exhausted our inventive powers in vain, and stood astounded, unwilling to trust our own senses, and yet unable to detect the least conceivable deception or collusion. We none of us knew what to think or say. We were taken all aback.

Various written questions, after we had given over trying to awaken her, were handed to Dr. P——, which he put to her mentally, without a word or sign that we could any of us discern, and to which she instantly answered. One question was, the time of the day; she answered, and answered correctly, much more so than most gentlemen’s watches present. To every question put she answered, and 9so far as any of us knew, or could ascertain, with perfect accuracy. The Doctor at length told her he thought she had slept long enough, and would do well to wake up. Instantly she was wide awake, and apparently unconscious of all that had passed. She remained awake for some time, when Dr. P—— said to her, “I will you to go to sleep again for just fifteen minutes, and then to wake up.” Instantly she dropped asleep. One or two of the company took the Doctor into a different part of the room, got him into an angry discussion, and made him forget the order he had given. I stood by the somnambulist holding my watch in my hand, and to my astonishment, precisely at the expiration of fifteen

minutes, she awoke. Various other experiments were tried, various severe tests were put;—some of them with complete success, others, indeed, proved total failures; and after a session of about three hours the party broke up and went to their several homes, some two or three converted, the greater part satisfied that there was and could be no collusion or deception, and yet wholly sceptical as to the alleged magnetic power.

CHAPTER II. GUESSES.

It is no easy matter to give full credit to the reality of the mesmeric phenomena, or to admit the alleged facts, and when forced to do so by a mass of testimony which it is impossible to resist, nothing is more natural than that we should suggest various hypotheses to account for them. Of all these hypotheses no one, to those who have been eye-witnesses of the mesmeric phenomena, is less satisfactory than that which attributes them to a species of juggling or sleight-of-hand, or to collusion between the magnetized and the magnetizer. Whatever may be the jugglery or connivance in particular cases, or whatever be the real solution of the problem, we must, as a general rule, admit the good faith of the parties. The man who could produce by address or skill, by art, the wonderful phenomena produced by the mesmerizer, who could so successfully elude the scrutiny of the most acute and intelligent witnesses, and so effectually deceive the senses of all classes, would have no motive to practise mesmerism, for he could produce more excitement, and gain more notoriety,

and more money as a professed juggler. It is very easy for those who have never seen the mesmeric phenomena, 11to set them down as a mere cheat, which they, if present, could very easily have detected, but it is very possible that they who have witnessed them are as able to detect an imposition as would be these critics themselves, and are far better judges than they are, not having seen them, unless we are to suppose that the blind can in some cases see better than those who have eyes. Among the innumerable witnesses of these phenomena there may be as careful and as intelligent observers as those who emit their oracles with solemn gravity on matters of which they confessedly know nothing. Academicians and members of royal and scientific societies are no doubt very respectable personages, but they are not always the best observers in the world. I would trust “Jack” to distinguish between a seal or horse-mackerel and the sea-serpent, much quicker than I would Professor Owen or Professor Agassiz. Learned academicians and members of scientific societies, whether of Paris or London,

Berlin or Philadelphia, are the easiest people in the world to impose upon. A clever lad could pass off upon them a sucker for a pike, and a crawfish for a lobster. But they need not judge all the world by themselves. Human testimony is not yet become wholly worthless. There is a cloud both of competent and of credible witnesses in almost every country, to the reality of the mesmeric phenomena, and to the good faith, the simplicity, and trustworthiness of both mesmerizers and mesmerized. 12Whatever be the agent that actually produces these extraordinary phenomena, we must seek it elsewhere than in mere jugglery, sleight-of-hand, trickery, or fraud.