682 THE PHENOMENA. &C. 



Mesmer, whether we consider him as an impostor or an enthusiast a 

 point which is now, perhaps, not very easy to determine did not lose 

 the opportunity which was offered him of improving his fortune ; so 

 that, in the short space of two years, he accumulated a very large 

 property. It was, perhaps, more to this circumstance than to the 

 pure love of truth, or a genuine zeal for science, that we are indebted 

 for the investigation which took place into the merits of the new 

 practice. The established faculty of Paris, finding themselves com- 

 pletely eclipsed by this foreign empiric, made a remonstrance on the 

 subject to the Court ; and this application fortunately produced the 

 appointment of a set of eight Commissioner, of whom the most 

 effective were five members of the Academy of Sciences, Bailly Le 

 Noy, De Boey, Lavoiner, and Franklin. This last philosopher took 

 the lead in the inquiry, for which he was peculiarly adapted, by his 

 acute and powerful understanding ; and to him, in conjunction with 

 his colleagues, we are indebted for one of the most valuable speci- 

 mens of scientific research that is to be met with in the history of 

 philosophy. We cannot, at present, enter into this most interesting 

 report, which we may, however, be tempted to refer to upon another 

 occasion ; but the address drawn up by Franklin concludes with the 

 following just reflections : " Man possesses the power of acting upon 

 his fellow-creatures, of agitating their nerves, and of even throwing 

 them into convulsions; but this action is not to be considered as of a 

 physical nature. We cannot perceive that it depends upon any com- 

 municated fluid; but it appears to be entirely of a moral nature, and 

 to operate through the medium of the imagination. It is an action 

 which is almost always productive of dangerous consequences, which 

 can never be admitted into philosophy, and which it is useful to be 

 acquainted with, merely for the purpose of being able to guard 

 against its effects. Magnetism will not, however, be without its ad- 

 vantages to that philosophy which condemns it, as it furnishes us 

 with an additional fact in the history of the errors of the human 

 mind, and exhibits a most interesting example of the powers of the 

 imagination." 



The great supporters of animal magnetism have recently been 

 Kieser in Jena, and Wolfart in Berlin ; the former explains the phe- 

 nomena by the striking difference between life by day and life by 

 night, both in the case of animals and vegetables the latter adopts 

 the mysticism of Mesmer. In 1820 the Prussian Government caused 

 a prize to be offered for the best treatise on the subject, but it was 

 subsequently withdrawn. In Germany, a country so fertile in mys- 

 ticism, both physical and metaphysical, animal magnetism has still 

 its adherents, and these not merely among the vulgar, but even 

 among men of learning. In some of the German universities, so re- 

 nowned for their indefatigable research and profound erudition, 

 animal magnetism takes its place with the other sciences, and has its 

 professors and lecturers ; journals are devoted to recording the cures 

 that are performed by it, and the cures stand upon the same evidence, 

 and are received with the same degree of confidence with other me- 

 dical facts. The following extracts from letters written by the Mar- 

 quis de Puysegur, a conscientious believer in Mesmerism, are 



