The spirit-rapper; an autobiography
sea-serpent, much quicker than I would Professor Owen or Professor
Agassiz. Learned academicians and members of scientific societies,
whether of Paris or London, Berlin or Philadelphia, are the easiest
people in the world to impose upon. A clever lad could pass off upon
them a sucker for a pike, and a crawfish for a lobster. But they need
not judge all the world by themselves. Human testimony is not yet become
wholly worthless. There is a cloud both of competent and of credible
witnesses in almost every country, to the reality of the mesmeric
phenomena, and to the good faith, the simplicity, and trustworthiness of
both mesmerizers and mesmerized. Whatever be the agent that actually
produces these extraordinary phenomena, we must seek it elsewhere than
in mere jugglery, sleight-of-hand, trickery, or fraud.
I do not give the results of my first experiments as any thing very
wonderful. They would excite little attention now. Mesmerism is much
more advanced than it was in the hands of my French friend. It is true,
there were rumors even then of far more marvellous phenomena, strange
stories of clairvoyance or second-sight were whispered, and strange
revelations of an invisible world, not recognized by received science,
were hinted; but my friend would not heed them. He was a rationalist,
and would not hear of any thing not explicable on natural principles.
But what I witnessed convinced me of the reality of the magnetic sleep,
and of the subjection of the somnambulist to the will of the mesmerizer,
or that one person can, under certain circumstances, exercise an
absolute control over the organs of another, and render the
somnambulist, during the magnetic sleep, absolutely insensible to all
save the mesmerizer. Here was certainly a marvellous power; what was it?
Was it, as Bailly and Franklin’s Report of 1784 asserted, the
imagination? Singular effect of imagination that would put a person
asleep at another’s will, render her completely insensible—dead to all
the world but the mesmerizer; make her go to sleep and wake up at the
time specified, answer questions only mentally put, and with a
promptness and an accuracy wholly impossible in her normal state! A very
inexplicable imagination that, and itself not less puzzling than the
mesmeric phenomena themselves.
“No, it is not imagination,” insisted Dr. P——, “any more than it is a
magnetic fluid, as asserted by Mesmer. It is the will of the magnetizer
operating immediately on the will of the somnambulist, and through that
on her organs. Or rather, it is the spiritual being in me operating
immediately on the spiritual being in her, and therefore these phenomena
afford an excellent refutation of materialism, and reveal a great and
glorious law of human nature, recognized, though misconceived, in all
ages and nations; a mighty law, but hitherto denied to human nature, and
supposed to be something lying out of our sphere, superhuman, and even
supernatural. Modern science began by denying the mysterious facts
recorded in history, but it is beginning to accept them, and to show
that they are all explicable on the principles of human nature.”
“What strikes me as most remarkable in the mesmeric phenomena,” said Mr.
Winslow, a rather grave minister of the extreme left of the Unitarian
denomination, who had joined Dr. P—— and myself on our way to my
lodgings, “what strikes me as most remarkable in the mesmeric phenomena
is, not the kind of power they reveal, but the degree. Every man who has
been accustomed to public speaking, if he has observed, is conscious of
a kindred power.”
“To put his audience asleep,” interposed Jack Wheatley, a young lawyer,
who was usually one of my companions while in the city, “but not always
to make them submissive to his will.”
“It is a mysterious power,” continued Mr. Winslow, “which the orator
seems to have over his audience, a power of which he is conscious, but
which is wholly unintelligible to himself.”
“But very intelligible to his hearers,” interposed Jack.
“You are impertinent, sir,” replied the minister, with offended dignity.
Sometimes when I have attempted to preach, I have found myself, though
perfectly familiar with my subject, hardly able to say a word. My ideas
dance around and before my mind like summer insects, but at such a
distance, and with such rapidity, that I strive in vain to seize them.
If I do succeed in saying something, my words penetrate not my hearers;
they as it were rebound, and affect only myself.”
“Indeed!” interjected the incorrigible Jack.
“Other times,” continued Mr. Winslow, not heeding Jack’s exclamation,
“my ideas seem to come of themselves, to flow without effort, and to
clothe themselves, without any thought or intervention of mine, in the
most fitting words. I find myself elevated above myself; I am in
intimate relation with the minds of my hearers. It seems that an
electric current passes from them to me and from me to them, making us
as it were one man. I speak with their combined force added to my own,
and each of them hears and takes in my words with the united
understanding of all.”
“There may be something in that,” said Jack. “You know, Doctor,” turning
to me, “that I have no more religion than a horse, and am seldom serious
for five consecutive minutes in my life. Well, being in the country the
other evening, on a visit to a crotchety old aunt, whose very cat would
not dare to purr or to wash her face on Sunday, and finding it
exceedingly dull, I took it into my head to seek a little amusement or
diversion by attending a Methodist prayer-meeting, or conference, held
in a school-house close by. I seldom go to meeting, but once-and-awhile
I like to attend a Methodist evening gathering. I sometimes find plenty
of fun. The performances this evening had begun before my arrival, for,
as usual, I was rather late. On entering I found the house crowded
almost to suffocation. Ten or a dozen men, women, boys, and girls, were
down on their knees, all screaming at once from the very top of their
lungs, and the rest of the brethren and sisters were groaning, shouting,
clapping their hands, in glorious confusion. I worked my way along to a
vacant spot which I spied just before a blazing fire. Turning my back to
the fire, and holding aside the skirts of my coat so that they should
not get scorched, I stood and looked for some minutes on the scene
before me. At first I was struck with its comical character, and was
much amused; soon, however, I grew serious, became sad, and then
indignant, that beings in human shape, and endowed, I presumed, with the
faculty of reason, should make such fools of themselves. I inwardly
resolved that for once I would “speak in meeting,” and that as soon as
there should be a pause or a lull, so that I could stand some chance of
making myself heard, I would give them a piece of Jack Wheatley’s mind.
In a word, I resolved to give them a downright scolding, and to tell
them plainly what fools they were to suppose that they could please God
by acting like so many bedlamites or howling dervishes.
“Well, after some fifteen or twenty minutes, there came a slacking up,
and I opened my mouth. I remembered what my old rhetoric master had
taught me, though how I came to is a puzzle, and resolved to begin in a
modest and conciliatory manner. It would not do to shock them in the
outset. I must first gain their ears and their good-will. So I began
with a grave face and a solemn tone, and made some commonplace remarks
on religion, and the duty to love and worship God, meaning, (after my
preliminary remarks, intended to gain the jury,) to bring in, with
crushing effect, my rebukes. But the brethren did not wait. Mistaking me
for a pious exhorter, they cried out almost at my first words, “Amen!”
“Glory!” “Bless the Lord!” “Go on, brother!” Will you believe it?
Instantly I caught the enthusiasm, became possessed by the =genius
loci=, entered in spite of myself into the spirit of the meeting, and
gave a most magnificent methodistical exhortation. The brethren and
sisters were edified, were enraptured, and when the time came for the
meeting to break up, the leader requested me to close the performances
with prayer, which I did with great fervor and unction. The spell lasted
till I got out of the house into the open air.”
“So Saul was among the prophets,” remarked Mr. Winslow, as Jack
concluded. “I am not surprised, for something similar occurred to myself
when I first began to preach. There is, I believe, something infectious
in these Methodist gatherings, and a wise man often finds himself acting
in them as a fool acteth.”
“Few wise men, I should think, ever go near them,” I remarked.
“I know not how that may be,” replied Mr. Winslow, “but there are few
men that are always wise, or who never find themselves doing a foolish
action. Even the greatest and wisest of our race sometimes unbend, and
prove that there are points in which they are united to ordinary
humanity. There is in this secret and invisible influence, to which I
refer, of one man over another that has long arrested my attention.
Often have I known both speaker and hearers electrified by a few
commonplace words, carried away, it would seem, by a force not their
own; now melted into tears; now inflamed with a pure and unearthly love;
now maddened with rage; now fired with a lofty enthusiasm, swelling with
heroic emotions, and panting to do heroic deeds. In these moments man is
more than man; a higher than man possesses him, and he becomes
thaumaturgic, works miracles, removes mountains, stops the course of
rivers, heals the sick, casts out devils, moves, speaks, and acts a god.
I call it the demonic element of human nature, and I think, if these
mesmeric phenomena turn out to be real, they will be found to have their
explanation in this mysterious and even fearful element, which the older
theologians called faith, and superstition looks upon as supernatural.”
“That there is some analogy between Animal Magnetism and the class of
facts to which you refer, or which you have in your mind,” observed Dr.
P——, “I do not deny. But, after all, what is the power which produces
them? To resolve one class of facts into another, equally if not more
mysterious, is not to explain them.”
“But what more, my dear Doctor,” I asked, “do you yourself do? There are
here two distinct questions: Is there really such a class of
extraordinary phenomena as you mesmerizers assert? and if so, what is
the agent or efficient cause in producing them? As to the first, I am so
far satisfied as to concede that the remarkable phenomena asserted may
be real; but I have not seen enough to warrant any sound induction as to
their cause or general law. I must continue my observation of facts much
longer, and extend it much further, before I proceed to any induction in
the case. You say they are produced by the will of one acting
immediately on the will of another, and through that on the organs of
the person magnetized, by virtue, as you allege, of a law of human
nature. Yet you do not tell us what this law is, or what is the nature
of that which my reverend friend calls the demonic power of man.”
“In no case does it belong to man to answer similar questions,” replied
Dr. P——. “We in no case know the essences of things. All that men are
able to do is to observe phenomena, and from them to infer or affirm
that there is and must be an agent or power which produces them. Can you
tell me what is gravitation? All you can tell me is, that bodies fall or
tend to the centre of the earth, and what are the laws and conditions of
that tendency. What is electricity? You cannot tell me. You can only
tell me that there is a certain class of phenomena, which you can trace
to a certain invisible and imponderable agent, and to that invisible and