ON SYMPATHY AND FASCINATION. 



Mr. Townsend, saw his skill tried on a horse that could never before be 

 brought to stand for a smith to shoe him. The day after Sullivan's half, 

 hour lecture, I went, not without some incredulity, to the smith's shop, 

 with many other curious spectators, when we were eye-witnesses of ilie 

 complete success of his art. This, too, had been a troop-horse, and it was 

 supposed, not without reason, that after regimental discipline had failed, 

 no other would be found availing. 1 observed that the animal seemed afraid 

 whenever Sullivan either spoke or looked at him."* In common cases, 

 Mr. Townsend adds, even the mysterious preparation of a private inter- 

 view was not necessary, the animal becoming tame at once. We have 

 here, therefore, another instance of most extraordinary and instantaneous 

 ascendancy of one animal being over another, without any manifest me- 

 dium of action, which we are occasionally, but not often, called upon to 

 witness. That it could not have been by force is clear ; and though natural 

 firmness and intrepidity may do much, they by no means appear to have 

 been sufficient in the present case, and could, indeed, accomplish but little 

 in the dark. Nor does there seem to be any mode of accounting for such 

 a control so reasonable as that of a natural or artificial emanation from 

 the fascinator, which we have already adverted to ; and, if the last, ob- 

 tained, perhaps, as irt many of these instances, by illining or impregnating 

 the person of the operator with tbe virtues of various plants unknown or 

 little known to the rest of the world. 



Thus far we may proceed safely upon the subject before us. But some 

 theorizers have not rested satisfied here, and with much rhapsody of in- 

 vention, have carried forward the same mysterious agency into the recesses 

 of the intellect, and contended that it is by a similar kind of medium, or, 

 sometimes, by a sort of elective attraction, operating invisibly through the 

 moral world, as the imperceptible powers before us operate in the physical, 

 that niind produces occasionally an instantaneous influence upon mind ; 

 whence, say they, we are at time& impelled by a certain indescribable sym- 

 pathy, to feel more pleased with one person of less intellectual and per- 

 haps even less moral worth, than with another person, whose endowments 

 in both respects are confessedly superior ; whilst others, pursuing the 

 hallucination still farther, have gravely suggested, that it is possibly by 

 some such medium that an intercourse is occasionally maintained between 

 ourselves and the spirits of aur departed friends ; between this world and 

 worlds around us. To hunt down such vagaries would indeed be a thrift- 

 less employment ; and I only mention them to show that philosophy has its 

 dreams and romances as well as history or even poetry ; and that the princi- 

 ples of physics areas liable to perversion as those of ethics. Philosophy 

 is a pilgrim, for the most part, of honest heart, clear foresight, and unorna- 

 mented dress and manners ; the genuine bride to whom heaven has be- 

 trothed him is Reason, of celestial birth and spotless virginity ; and the fair 

 fruit of so holy a union is truth, virtue, sobriety, and order. But should 

 ever the plain pilgrim play the truant, as unfortunately in the present cor- 

 rupt state of things we have reason to fear has too frequently proved a fact.^ 

 — should ever Philosophy migrate from his proper hermitage, and in an 

 hour of ebriety connect himself with the harlot Imagination, what can be 

 the result of so unlicensed k dalliance but a spawn of monsters and mis- 

 creations ; of hideous and unreal existences ; of phantoms and will-o*the- 

 whisps, equally abhorred by God and man ; treacherously hanging up their 



* Surrey of the County of Cork, p. 438, 

 •^4 



