HYPNOTISM IN ANIMALS. 619 



In the want of discernment in which such an observer is placed, 

 when investigating Nature, he regards the temporary coincidences 

 and consequences of certain real events as in themselves real. He 

 accepts these circumstances at once, and without thorough investiga- 

 tion, as having an intimate and direct relation with real events. He, 

 therefore, forms a conception of something which is not real, and he 

 reports as an actual occurrence that which, in the way he means, never 

 in fact took place. Such a circumstance constitutes an event not thor- 

 oughly tested, or an incident unequally investigated, and, I believe, we 

 are not merely logically justified, but morally forced, to distinguish, 

 among events in the perception of Nature, a new and especial category, 

 that of events viewed unequally. In this category are embraced cir- 

 cumstances which play a most extensive role in the history of the de- 

 velopment of the human mind. Without the conception of this class 

 of supposed incidents, we would never be capable of understanding 

 and explaining certain obscure appearances and tendencies of the 

 human mind, and the persistency with which they rise and maintain 

 themselves as often as they are overthrown, and when they have 

 scarcely even had time to disappear. 



Nothing strengthens the mind like a habit of investigating natural 

 events with thoroughness and strictness. Without this habit, credu- 

 lity and superstition can neither be broken nor restrained. 



We children of the nineteenth century are not a little proud of 

 our civilization, culture, and enlightenment. And yet, if a comparison 

 were made between the ruling mind of the middle ages and that which 

 now reigns, no great progress would be perceived. In fact, we have 

 no right to plume ourselves on the material development of our era, so 

 long as certain tendencies of the mind remain as they were ages ago, 

 and while we are no more capable, than we were then, of investigating 

 natural events, so as to deduce the truth from them. 



It would carry me too far from my subject if I were to give even a 

 hasty glance at all those tendencies and false appearances which, so to 

 say, calumniate our enlightened and cultivated life. It will suffice 

 merely to mention the manias of table-turning, spirit-rapping, spiritual 

 apparitions, animal magnetism, and clairvoyance. To-morrow, at the 

 conclusion of the second lecture, I will give a more detailed account 

 of these subjects, as they appear in the light of facts. In what I have 

 said this morning, I wished principally to prepare your minds for the 

 facts I am about to state, and for the proper consideration of certain 

 apparently wonderful physical phenomena which, though partially 

 known for some time, have received no scientific investigation, and 

 which, therefore, have not been awarded their proper place in the 

 domain of nervous physiology. 



During the autumn of the past year, while sojourning in Bohemia, I 

 made the acquaintance of a gentleman who, in the course of one of our 

 scientific discussions, communicated to me the striking information 



