10 The Relations of Mind and Matter. [January, 
THE RELATIONS OF MIND AND MATTER. 
BY CHARLES MORRIS. 
(Continued from p. 1159, December number.) 
UCH space might here be given to the numerous and impor- 
tant observations on hypnotic phenomena published of late 
years, but we must confine ourselves to the mesmeric experiments 
of the Psychic Society. These experiments were very numerous, 
and were conducted with such extreme care that their evidence 
in favor of direct mental communication seems incontestable. 
Their results were of a more declared character than those of the 
thought transfer experiments. Not only thought transfer but 
mind control appeared. The active seemed to take full posses- 
sion of the passive mind, and this often with a considerable dis- 
tance intervening between the parties. The thoughts of the one 
mind appeared to infuse themselves into the other, driving back its 
own consciousness and replacing it with a pseudo-consciousness, 
and this so completely that the sensations of pain, taste, &c., felt 
by the operator, were also felt by the sensitive, and referred by 
him to their appropriate locality in his own body. In like man- 
ner the direct control of the mind of the sensitive over his body 
and of his body over his mind was exercised by the operator, 
and consciousness of pain in any part could be abolished at will. 
Some of these phenomena, indeed, were so curious and the mode 
of producing them so significant, that it certainly appeared as if 
the whole body was permeated by psychic substance, and that 
the mind was related to the outer world by psychic nerves in an 
equivalent sense to its material nerve connection. 
In these mesmeric phenomena, however, it is evident that the 
channel of communication between mind and mind is not usually 
an open one, or the body psychically transparent. Most persons 
are more or less obtuse to the psychic sense, and only in special 
cases is it freely active. And in these cases the relations of oper- 
ator and sensitive are personal. No second operator can exert an 
equal control over the sensitive. It is as if the psychic nerve, 
like the physical nerve, became susceptible to familiar influences, 
but resistant to unfamiliar ones. 
Of the other phenomena adduced by this society it will suffice q 
to refer to those of psychic communication at a distance, of which 
they give many seemingly well authenticated instances. In one 
SAAN $ 4 
