294: BARON EEICHENBACH'S 



A parallel statement is the following: 'The Brothers 

 Davenport may have been impostors, or they may not have 

 been impostors ; but assuming them the former, they must 

 have behaved exactly as they did.' 



Enough of these individuals ; let me pass on to the con- 

 sideration of Baron Reichenbach's testimony in regard to 

 what he believed to be a newly-discovered physical force. 

 The existence of such a new physical force he himself ima- 

 gined to have discovered about 1845. What the baron may 

 think about it now, or whether even the baron be alive, I 

 do not know. 



It is a circumstance, a fact, the explanation of which I 

 willingly delegate to those who especially study the mental 

 characteristics of the age, that no form or phase of mysticism 

 prevalent during the present century, in civilised portions of 

 the world at least, has been completely divorced, by those 

 who most fully believed, or still believe in it, from association 

 with science. Probably this circumstance may be fairly 

 regarded as an index of the appreciative hold science has 

 taken upon the minds of individuals belonging to the present 

 century. Whatever the explanation, the fact is undoubted. 

 Thus, the phenomena of attraction, or presumed attraction, 

 adverted to by Mesmer, and which since his time have been 

 designated as < mesmerism,' or * animal magnetism,' were not 

 as their second designation implies complacently referred 

 to the category of things purely supernatural, inexplicable ; 

 but were referred, with what justice remains to be seen, to 

 the operation of one of the physical forces, i.e. magnetism ; 

 or rather, perhaps, it should be said, a modification of mag- 

 netism, a species of this physical force appertaining to animal 

 bodies. 



This modifying concession is one that will strike the phi- 

 losopher, accustomed to physical inquiries, as being vague 

 in form of expression. Undoubtedly this is so; and the 

 modifying concession is only made in deference to those 



