MESMERISM. 395 



rely upon others where there is strength sufficient, were it exerted, 

 in his own organization. A fatal mistake is made whenever we treat 

 with petting and coddling, in our own minds, or in others, states 

 which we ought to discipline with a moral lash ; and this mistake, 

 I fear, is often committed by mesmeric patients. They must know 

 that there is no patent outward means that can be a substitute for 

 sanity of will j that sooner or later they must exert themselves, and 

 waken from their delusions j and that every dose of their mesmeric 

 opium over and above what was required, is the vehicle of a weak- 

 ness which it will cost them a fresh struggle to conquer, whenever 

 the time when they must arise shall come. 



"We had almost forgotten to place to the credit of mesmerism its 

 introduction of a painless surgery, which is among the most brilliant 

 discoveries of the age. The doctors were totally incredulous of this 

 matter, until ether and chloroform came and did the same thing in a 

 grosser shape. If there were shame in the world they must have felt 

 it, when they found how easy their impossibilities of a fortnight be- 

 fore had become. They doubted the testimony of honest men where 

 mesmerism was concerned; they accepted the same facts when 

 chloroform produced them. It was like them to believe in bottles 

 and to disbelieve in man. But let them pass. This discovery of 

 extinction of pain has no end of results, moral as well as physical. 

 The least it does is to annihilate severe material sufferings; its next 

 fruit is in time to strike out their dread, which is the great body 

 killer. It is plain also to see, that as an idea it is very penetrating, 

 and suggests a painless moral surgery among the ends of man : that 

 all operations in which our dear properties are taken from us, shall 

 be, like the first abstraction of Adam's rib, performed upon us in 

 mercy's "deep sleep." 



In quitting mesmerism we notice of it, as we also observed of the 

 Lingian movements, that it gathers up under its banner a number 

 of practices that have existed from time immemorial in most parts 

 of the earth. This is to say, that it communicates with a wide 

 common sense. And although we do not choose to call everything 

 mesmerism which is strange or mysterious looking, yet we recognize 

 a certain family likeness between it and many things which are 

 even venerable. There is however nothing divine in it, and it has 



