is 78.] 
A New Theory of Trance. 
35 
to understand from what has already been stated in regard 
to the predisposing causes, but it would be an error to infer 
that those officers were not capable of being entranced. If 
they should all sit in a circle around a table for half an hour 
or more, with the expectation that some strange things 
would develop, very likely some of them would become 
carried away, and, by unconscious muscular motion, would 
move the table; or perhaps they would feel sensations like 
eleCtrical shocks through their bodies, or they might go into 
convulsions, or might experience wonderful visions, hearing 
the voices and seeing the faces of loved ones. 
Tenthly, — That this hypothesis accounts for the period- 
icity of trance in certain cases. 
It is the nature of all functional nervous diseases — neu- 
ralgia, sick headache, hay fever, inebriety, and some forms 
of insanity — to appear more or less periodically. It may be 
said that the majority of cases of spontaneous trance are 
periodic. 
It may be opposed to all this process of reasoning that no 
one has ever seen with his eyes the brain thus concentrating 
its force during an attack of trance; but it must be remem- 
bered that only exceptionally can scientific hypotheses be 
verified by aCtual sight. Even in the material world the 
seen is but a fraction of the unseen. No man ever saw the 
waves of light ; no man has ever seen gravity : these uni- 
versal forces are studied only through their phenomena, by 
means of which we frame hypotheses of the law of gravita- 
tion and the existence of a luminiferous ether. In the 
realm of physiology and pathology the chances of verification 
by aCtual sense perception are more rare than in astronomy 
or physics. 
We have now laid before our readers what we hope is a 
clear and concise account of Dr. Beard’s theory of trance, 
and of the principal arguments which he adduces in its 
favour. In his paper he enters at very considerable length 
into the necessity, in such investigations as of spiritualism, of 
reasoning by the deduCtive method, &c. He moreover insists 
that it is only those who have made themselves masters of, 
and authorities in, cerebro-physiology and pathology, and 
who have thereby learned that the subjeCt lies within the 
mental force to see more than one side of it. But, like Dr. Carpenter and most 
other writers on these subjects, he fails to see all sides, and he makes the mistake 
which is fatal to the scientific study of trance, of conceding the possibility of 
thought reading. This serious mistake results from the studying the subject 
inductively instead of deductively ; it is indeed, as I shall show farther on, an 
inevitable mistake from that false method of reasoning. 
