THE PSYCHO-PHYSIOLOGICAL SCIENCES. 727 



the medical records of former times contain much that is absurd and 

 incredible. 



The second proposition is but little better than the first. There is 

 an unfortunate development of brain which makes or marks the con- 

 stitutional and incurable bigot, to whom bigotry is pliilosophy. The 

 Italian philosophers who denounced Galileo, and the French physicians 

 who laughed at Harvey, were as unsuspicious of their own mental de- 

 fects as Dr. Carpenter. Could anything but the blinding impulse of 

 bigotry induce a man of great intelligence, age, and experience, to 

 confound possibiUty with certainty in this ridiculous manner to 

 affirm that because certain individuals can be mesmerized in the 

 American manner, wide awake, but passive creatures of the operator's 

 voice, therefore we should consider all men liable to this condition, 

 and treat all testimony that contravenes our opinions of the course of 

 Nature as the testimony of helpless mesmeric subjects? By an exact 

 parity of reasoning we may say certain individuals in every com- 

 munity have committed, or might commit, murder : therefore, w^hen- 

 ever we find any one dead, and do not know how he died, we may as- 

 sume that the men or w^omen who were in his vicinity murdered him. 



But suppose Dr. Carpenter should witness a case of levitation, and 

 have the honesty to report what he saw, shall we then hold him to be 

 either a mesmerized dupe or a confederate knave which would he 

 prefer to be called ? Dr. Carpenter may he sincere, but he speaks 

 quite reverentially of the Scriptures, although by his own declarations 

 he must regard their miracles as shams which had never been exposed 

 by a learned expert ; and their spiritual phenomena, so analogous to 

 those of the present day, as base impostures. 



The third proposition, considered as a w^ork of art, is an ingenious 

 compound of evil, on which his satanic majesty might smile in grim 

 approbation. Dr. Carpenter's language is as follows : " My conten- 

 tion is, that where apparent departures from them [the laws of Nature] 

 take place through human instrumentality, w^e are justified in assum- 

 ing in the first instance either fraudulent deception, or unintentional 

 5e{/'-deception, or both combined until the absence of either shall 

 have been proved by every conceivable test that the sagacity of 

 skeptical experts can devise." 



As for himself, he affirms that he has "no other theory to support 

 than that of the well-ascertained laws of Nature ; " and further, that 

 " it is quite legitimate for the inquirer to enter upon this study with 

 that ' prepossession ' in favor of the ascertained and universally-ad- 

 mitted laws of Nature which believers in spiritualism make it a 

 reproach against men of science that they entertain." 



If this be a true and honest statement of the case, there is no case 

 in court for discussion : Dr. Carpenter is a philosopher, and the 

 spiritualists are hopeless fools. By what muddled process of thought 

 he could bring himself to make such a statement, we need not inquire. 



