MESMERISM OR ANTIIROPOPATIIY. 391 



replaces it there, and in such a shape that we are emboldened to 

 hope from what we know of itself and its advocates, that it will never 

 cede its place again. 



We now come to another part in the organism of healing, namely, 

 Mesmerism, or what we might term Anthvopopathy, as it cures by 

 the application of man to man. Of its virtues in cases that have 

 resisted all other means, there cannot be a question : its facts are 

 established not alone by rigid experiment, but by deeds worthy of a 

 mural crown, because they have saved the lives of many citizens. 

 It is for this reason, and also because our organic philosophy, which 

 knows no fear, demands it, that we pass on to Mesmerism, although 

 a storm of hatred rages about it, and every step of its advance is a 

 fight. 



It would be interesting in the history of science to canvass the 

 reasons why certain large classes of facts have been rejected from 

 time to time : why, for instance, the Church of Rome felt peculiarly 

 aggrieved that the earth should go round the sun, and not vice versa ; 

 why certain moderns dislike to live on a planet which took more 

 than seven days for its creation; why skeptics have a call to blink 

 all evidence for spiritual communications, and afterwards opening 

 their sockets widely, complain of the absence of facts; and lastly, 

 why the medical profession fumes and shivers whenever mesmerism 

 is brought forward. In all these cases, as we deem, it is the instinct 

 of self-preservation that like a skin (p. 282) defends the parties 

 against the reception of the facts. They know instinctively that the 

 limitation and eggshell of their state is in danger, and that if the 

 obnoxious point be admitted, they will have the trouble of building 

 a new house on a larger scale. At present the pill-boxes are arranged 

 in pretty rows; but allow this mesmerism and its consequences, and 



received. To our mind, no school ought to be without a physical inspector; it" 

 official, so much the better. In the plastic period of youth, physical defects and 

 awkwardnesses may be corrected, which are past relief at a later time. The 

 bodies of boys and girls ought to be developed by inspection, instruction, andemu- 

 lation, and especially by the universal means of dancing, fencing, and the politer 

 movements. Nor should such trifling matters as biting nails and picking noses 

 be tolerated. Greek and Latin are of less importance to youth than a corpus 

 senium out of which all manifest unseemliness has been weeded. 



