No. 2.] BRITISH ASSOCIATION MEETING}. 159 



to the countenance and attempted authentication of the foolish 

 dreams of the practitioners of spiritualism, and similar chimeri- 

 cal hypotheses. The natural tendency to a belief in the marvel- 

 lous is sufficient to explain the ready acceptance of such views by 

 the ignorant ; and it is not improbable that a higher species of 

 similar credulity may frequently act with persons of greater cul- 

 tivation, if their scientific information has been of a partial kind. 

 It must be admitted, further, that extremely curious and rare, and 

 to those who are not acquainted with nervous phenomena, appa- 

 rently marvellous phenomena, present themselves in peculiar states 

 of the nervous system — some of which states may be induced 

 through the mind and may be made more and more liable to re- 

 cur, and greatly exaggerated by frequent repetition. But making 

 the fullest allowance for all these conditions, it is surprising that 

 persons otherwise appearing to be within the bounds of sanity, 

 should entertain a confirmed belief in the possibility of phenomena, 

 which, while they are at variance with the best established physi- 

 cal laws, have never been brought under proof by the evidences of 

 the senses, and are opposed to the dictates of sound judgment. 

 It is so far satisfactory in the interests of true biological science 

 that no man of note can be named from the long list of thoroughly 

 well-informed anatomists and physiologists, who has not treated 

 the belief in the separate existence of powers of animal magnet- 

 ism and spiritualism as wild speculations, devoid of all foundation 

 in the carefully tested observation of facts. It has been the habit 

 of the votaries of the systems to which I have referred to assert 

 that scientific men have neglected or declined to investigate the 

 phenomena with attention and candour ; but nothing can be far- 

 ther from the truth than this statement. Not to mention the 

 admirable reports of the early French academicians, giving the 

 account of the negative result of an examination of the earlier 

 mesmeric phenomena by men in every way qualified to pronounce 

 judgment on their nature, I am aware that from time to time men 

 of eminence, and fully competent, by their knowledge of biologi- 

 cal phenomena, and their skill and accuracy in conducting scien- 

 tific investigation, have made the most patient and careful exami- 

 nation of the evidence placed before them by the professed believers 

 and practitioners of so-called magnetic, phreno-magnetic, electro- 

 biological, and spiritualistic phenomena ; and the result has been 

 uniformly the same in all cases when they were permitted to secure 

 conditions by which the reality of the phenomena, or the justice 



