i34 
Mesmerism. 
[March, 
They do not awake, in persons who are aesthetically emo- 
tional, the sentiment which springs from the sight of 
paintings of queer small ships, or boats with quaint old 
rigging, old tumble-down cottages, or roughly-built carts. 
The latter sort of things composed our forefathers’ 
surroundings, and not steamships and locomotives. If the 
latter had borne them over land and sea for a thousand 
generations, they too would by this time have afforded to the 
artist fit subjects for his pencil. 
But for the extent to which this article has run, some 
evidence might be added to show that our love or hatred of 
such sounds and odours as mankind have come into contaCl 
with abundantly, have been acquired by a process analogous 
to that by which man’s taste for visual beauty was bestowed 
upon him. 
I have only to add that, although physical beauty only has 
been referred to in this article, it is clear to my mind that 
the mode of the origin of man’s principal ideas of moral 
beauty must necessarily be closely analogous to that of his 
main ideas of the physical. 
III. MESMERISM. 
By N. Gordon Munro. 
Doctor. — “ You see her eyes are open.” 
Gentleman. — “ Aye, but their sense is shut.” 
f jHERE seems to be in this age of scepticism and doubt 
l a prevailing tendency among men of Science to enter- 
tain feelings of contempt towards anything which is, 
even in the slightest degree, invested with the character of 
the supernatural. Whatever has a tendency to disturb pre- 
conceived opinions, or to pass beyond the limits of our 
present intelligence, is, without inquiry, condemned as an 
absurd and dangerous innovation. Now this antagonism 
and habitual resistance to whatever seems new, instead of 
being productive of good, is nothing more or less than the 
outcome of prejudice and self-interest, and as such merely 
serves to interpose obstacles to the advance of Science. 
Healthy criticism can by no means be objected to ; on the 
contrary, criticism, in the proper sense of the word, is the 
auxiliary of truth, and the means by which the true is 
differentiated from the false. But it surely cannot be called 
healthy criticism where the critic takes his stand under the 
banner of the nil admirari , and launches forth his thunder- 
