146 BAILLY. 



dead ? In short, do we not remember the amusing dis- 

 tich, affixed at the time to the gate of the Cemetery of 

 St. Medard ? 



" By royal decree, we prohibit the gods 

 To work any miracles near to these sods." * 



Servan must have known better than any one that in 

 regard to testimony, and in questions of complex facts, 

 quality always carries the day over mere numbers ; let 

 us add, that quality does not result either from titles of 

 nobility, or from riches, nor from the social position, nor 

 even from a certain sort of celebrity. What we must 

 seek for in a witness is a calmness of mind and of feeling, 

 a store of knowledge, and a very rare thing, notwithstand- 

 ing the name it bears, common sense ; on the other hand, 

 what we must most avoid is the innate taste of some per- 

 sons for the extraordinary, the wonderful, the paradoxical. 

 Servan did not at all recollect these precepts in the 

 criticism he wrote on Bailly's work. 



We have already remarked that the Commissioners of 

 the Academy and of the Faculty did not assert that the 

 Mesmeric meetings were always ineffectual. They only 

 saw in the crises the mere results of imagination ; nor did 

 any sort of magnetic fluid reveal itself to their eyes. I 

 will also prove, that imagination alone generated the ref- 

 utation that Servan gave to Bailly's theory. "You deny," 

 exclaims the attorney-general, "you deny, gentlemen 

 commissioners, the existence of the fluid which Mesmer 

 has made to act such an important part ! I maintain, on 

 the contrary, not only that this fluid exists, but also that 

 it is the medium by the aid of which all the vital func- 



* " De par le Koi, deTense a Dieu 

 D'opeVer miracle en ce lieu ! " 



