692 MESMERISM. 



an hour he appeared really dead. Bernier informs us that In- 

 dian Bramins and Fakirs can throw themselves into somnam- 



state." I have frequently read in the newspaper of persons opening the 

 window and being dashed to pieces in their sleep. But, waving this, we 

 saw that Negretti struck himself against a door which was shut without his 

 knowledge, and once hurt himself severely against a wall (p. 640. ) : that Galen 

 was awakened by striking against a stone : and that Mr. Dubree in his sleep 

 threw himself out of the window and broke his leg. Besides the soul must be 

 very stupid in sleep-waking, while it is doing the more wonderful things, 

 seeing with the surface, it is not aware of half that is existing and doing 

 around. ( See for instance supra, p. 635. 637. 640. sq.) Supposing that persons 

 perceive, independently of touch, by their surface, this shows no immaterial 

 substance independent of matter to be at work, for the material surface is con- 

 cerned in the operation. If the mesmerised person has intelligence of the past, 

 present, and future, in regard to others as soon as they are put into relation with 

 him by contact or intermediate communication, the unconnected, detached, imma- 

 terial substance must be a strange substance, which, to do these wonders, requires 

 material bodies and their conjunction. At any rate, there is no detached im- 

 material essence at work. But I am weary of such nonsense. Any person of 

 common discernment, unbewildered by fancies and unfettered by the intolerance 

 of conceit and prejudice, must perceive that all the phenomena of sleep-waking 

 are the effects of disorder of the matter called nervous system ; coexist or are 

 variously interchanged with all kinds of disorders of this part of the animal body; 

 and are often attended by common bodily symptoms heat, pain, throbbing, 

 flushing of the head, &c. ; and arise from the same causes as other nervous 

 diseases, mechanical injury, derangement of some distant part, &c. j and are 

 sometimes hereditary. Brutes are influenced by mesmerism like human beings ; 

 and even vegetables, and inanimate matter. If mesmerism can act at a dis- 

 tance, so, let us remember, can gravitation, affinity, and other properties of 

 inanimate matter. The soul, in the mesmerised, has disconnected itself from 

 the brain! the fluid (is the fluid the soul? is not fluid still matter?) has gone 

 out in search of objects! Where is it? and when out, how happens it to learn 

 so little? to see only what is passing with respteot .to certain persons? to see 

 only one person perhaps dying? or does the soul of the dying person go to its 

 friends for a moment and show itself in those remarkable cases of the fancied 

 sight of dying distant friends ? The soul flies out under the manipulations of 

 the magnetiser, and then flies away home again, knowing its way to the original 

 skull, like a little material dickybird. Mr. Colquhoun's views are fit only for 

 old divines and nursery maids. An enlightened Christian will scorn the support 

 of any thing for his revelation but its plairi evidences ; these he will consider 

 all-sufficient ; and above all will he scorn the assistance of mesmerism, when 

 he reflects, a fact which Mr. Colquhoun does not mention, that some of the 

 greatest mesmerists, those who believe things which I will not believe till I see 

 them, but which he believes, -^contend that all the prophecies of the Old and New 



