'i 76 Literary and Philosophical Society. 



imagine for a moment that he may be wrong, and ascribes 

 Mesmer's results to imagination, a word commonly intro- 

 duced as a kind of magician's spell to explain everything 

 that will not agree with presumptuous theories having weak 

 foundations. The word imagination is used as for many 

 years electricity has been used, a power wonderful enough, 

 but itself as mysterious as anything that it is supposed to 

 explain, and its use simply implies ignorance in most 

 cases. After nearly a hundred years Mesmer found an 

 expounder in Manchester. Dr, Braid examined the subject 

 soon after he came from Scotland to settle here, when 

 he formed the theory which he published in a volume on 

 * Hypnotism, or the Sleep of the Nerves.' At least it proved 

 many long denied facts, and advanced an explanation so 

 far. All orthodox men thought it prudent to laugh, but 

 now that his theory comes back from Germany, although 

 unacknowledged, and probably unknown to the new writer, 

 it may bring more honour to the product of our own com- 

 munity. Dr. Braid was not looked on as sound here, was 

 in fact despised by some as a quack, and he died before 

 it was found by the public that he was a discoverer. What 

 man can outlive the hatred of bigots ? It is certainly very 

 amusing to see men who have learnt the grosser and more 

 superficial laws of nature known to our books refusing to 

 believe anything which these laws do not account for. 

 The most wonderful things in nature are done by laws for 

 which we have no expression beyond statement of facts. 

 The reformer is often pitied as a quack. We have many 

 good working scientific men who bring forth their little 

 laws in neat sentences to express their ideas of the chains 

 by which they propose to bind nature we do not object to 

 their laws, but in most cases they may rather be compared 



