72 BEING AND FACULTIES OF MAN. 



which the Will and the Consciousness never have any 

 control. Thus the motions of the somnambulist are to a 

 large extent performed without the Consciousness, though 

 they are of a nature over which the Will, in ordinary 

 circumstances, would preside and exercise direction. On 

 the other hand, cramp, lock-jaw, and other diseased actions 

 of the muscles, are of a nature over which, the will un- 

 fortunately never has any control, and they prove to us 

 conclusively that, though Consciousness may be associated 

 with, and part of the vital force, it is not the motive force, 

 nor necessarily associated with it that, in fact, the motive 

 force is not a vital, but merely a mechanical force. 



But all mechanical forces are capable of mechanical 

 regulation and control, and it is therefore quite possible 

 and within the limits of legitimate logic to conceive that 

 what can be produced naturally or by disease in the 

 mechanical motions of the human body may be produced 

 by the application of artificial control over the body. 

 For if motion in a dead body may be produced by the 

 application of electricity, why may not involuntary motion 

 be also produced in a living body by the application of it ? 

 If muscular action be produced by electric currents 

 obeying the volition, why may not more powerful currents, 

 as M. Ampere has shown, be so applied as to control 

 these currents in opposition to the individual will ? If 

 somnambulism and dreaming, and lock-jaw and cramp, 

 may be produced by natural causes, why may they not be 

 produced also by artificial means, if we know how to use 

 these means ? And yet some of these phenomena go far 

 beyond anything that Mesmerists have been able to prove, 

 and show an involuntary mechanical and electric action 

 in our physical nature beyond the Mesmerist's absolute 

 power, whatever may be said of his pretensions. It may 

 be said that these facts go to prove the phenomena of 

 Mesmerism. We have no objection to prove them if they 



