394 HEALTH. 



the marvels of clairvoyance and transmission of thought, and in 

 short the psychical phenomena of mesmerism. But then under 

 this view, our world and our matter so change, that we are count- 

 ing upon admissions which few readers can make, but without which 

 we cannot proceed many steps. Let it suffice then to say, that man 

 in the posture of giving up himself, becomes a bodily representative 

 of the powers of unselfishness for the time being; that miracle 

 haunts him, because unselfishness is a miracle j that he enters upon 

 universal sight, second sight, third sight, and more sights than you 

 please, because unselfing is the core of all wide vision. That he 

 dips his body into vigors and cures by the same abnegation, because 

 unselfishness is the tree whose leaves are for the healing of all men. 

 This comes just as the soul comes to the body : the due circumstance 

 or posture of affairs is there, and by the law of correspondence, 

 whereby the equilibrium of creation is maintained, its spirit is " in 

 the midst of it" (pp. 242—244, 294—300). The very theatricism 

 of what is good, true and unselfish, is healing to the scenework of 

 the body. 



We have no certain knowledge of the limits of mesmerism as a 

 curative agent, nor of the conditions which should exclude cases 

 from this treatment. In functional disorders of the nervous system 

 it is especially indicated, and, as a number of diseases even seem- 

 ingly organic spring from this root, it appears that it has a large 

 field of applications here. Hysteria, epilepsy, catalepsy, and those 

 other maladies in which the visceral motions predominate over the 

 rhythmical or rational motions of the lungs, come very markedly 

 under its benefits. But it is not in our power to lay down any rule 

 for the distribution to it of cases generally j and therefore we wait 

 upon experiment, which shows that the utilities to be derived from 

 its employment are very extensive. 



Like drugs, cold water, movements, and stimulants, mesmerism 

 is capable of abuse in many ways. Ill-disposed persons may use it 

 to acquire an influence for bad ends. It is however probably more 

 often abused by the patients than by the agents, being resorted to 

 as a kind of opiate to compensate for the want of moral determina- 

 tion. In this case it keeps up a pernicious valetudinarianism that 

 saps the foundations of resolve in the patient, by causing him to 



