6] 
the phenomenon of thought-reading, or sympathy, has any exist- 
ence, what does it mean? It means, that under certain conditions 
the motive power of the brain may be something distinct from, and 
outside, itself: that it obeys a will other than its own. If so, it is 
easier to conceive that it is not its own governor, that the power 
it ordinarily obeys is not itself, but something other than itself, 
- whose behest it obeys. 
To return, then. In the second of the three possible explan- 
ations I have given of the power possessed by Mr. Fletcher, we 
have the effect of sight without the use of the organs of sight; in 
the third, the effect of sound without the use of the organs of 
hearing. ‘The independence of two such important material organs 
makes the conception of a total independence of the material body 
less difficult. 
It is to be regretted, on the score of Psychology, that mes- 
merism fell into disuse some thirty or forty years ago : its use prior 
to that was steadily increasing. The physician who used it most 
was Dr. Esdaile, in the hospital at Calcutta. Medical science 
applied successively ether, chloroform, and laughing-gas as anees- 
thetics ; all preferable for that purpose to mesmerism—-quicker and 
more effectual. The practical English mind allowed mesmerism to 
fall into disuse. An interest is reviving in it among a few who see 
its relation to Psychology, and Dr. Gregory’s book has been 
re-published without the first three chapters. These were devoted 
to proving that mesmerism was not trickery and imposture. No 
one now would urge that conclusion, and this should be remembered 
when we find so many scientific men denying the possibility of 
‘clairvoyance. The phenomena of mesmerism have been subject 
to fierce controversy while passing through the phases that appear 
to be the invariable fate of new truths. ‘When first asserted,” to 
use the words of Serjeant Cox, “they are vehemently disputed, not 
by investigation, by experiment, and test, but by @ Jriord arguments 
to prove that they cannot be.” But a fact remains still a fact 
in defiance of any quantity of argument to prove that it cannot be, 
and will assert itself to common sense, however reluctant scientists 
may be to admit that there can possibly be any natural law or force 
