142 OF VITAL MOTION. 



the information of his arrival could have been 

 communicated by the ordinary senses. The feelings, 

 therefore, as well as ideas and words, betoken the 

 operation of mind beyond the limits of the body where 

 it originates. 



In addition to these there are also other and more 

 tangible signs which show the extra-corporeal opera- 

 tion of mind. In mesmerism, for example, one person 

 is fascinated by another, and the tongue and all the 

 muscles are removed from the dominion- of conscious- 

 ness and volition. In stammering we see how the 

 disordered action is communicable from one child to 

 another, or even from one adult to another ; and it 

 is the same also in more general convulsive affections, 

 as hysteria and epilepsy. It is not to account for 

 these phenomena by ascribing them to imitation, for 

 the facts prove that the person is mastered by an 

 involuntary impulse an impulse, moreover, which 

 does not originate with himself; for, before he wit- 

 nessed the stammering or convulsed person who was 

 the occasion of his seizure, he may have been per- 

 fectly sound and healthy. It is the same also with 

 the unthinking bravery of soldiers in action, who for 

 the most part are absorbed, without any spontaneous 

 effort, in the spirit of their captain. Whether in signs 

 of depression or excitement, therefore, as exhibited in 

 transient paralysis or involuntary action of the entire 

 frame, or of part of the frame, there is sufficient proof 



