The spirit-rapper; an autobiography

unknown agent, that ‘occult power,’ as an earlier philosophy would have called it, you give the name of electricity. All you can know of it is, its existence, the laws by which it operates, the means by which you can avail yourself of it, get power over it, avert it from your house or barn when it breaks forth in the thunder-gust, or use it to drive your machinery, to convey your messages, or to solace your pain. Science calls it a fluid, but what it is in itself science knows not, for it has seen it only in its operations or effects. So with this power, or law of human nature, to which I ascribe the magnetic phenomena. All I pretend to tell is, that the law is a reality, and all I pretend to demonstrate is, that we may avail ourselves of it, and use it for the most useful and noble purposes. This is enough. All we need to know is its existence, or the purposes to which it may be applied, and how we can apply it or render it serviceable. Let man know that he has it, and then let him learn how to use it.” “But after all, I am a little frightened at the supposition of this power,” remarked Mr. Winslow. “There is something fearful in this complete subjection of one, soul and body, to the will of another. The somnambulist is, during the mesmeric trance, the slave of the mesmerizer, as much so as was the genie to the possessor of the wonderful lamp, and he may do with him or her what he pleases. Is there not danger here? May he not use his power in a base way, to gratify his passions, his lusts, his hatred, or his revenge, and with complete impunity, since the somnambulist retains no consciousness or recollection on returning to the normal state, of what passed during the magnetic slumber? Let Animal Magnetism become generally known and practised, and who could know when or where he was safe? Any one of us might at any moment fall a victim, or be made the blind instrument of the basest and most malignant passions of others.” “Those are idle fears,” replied Dr. P——; “none but virtuous men can exercise the power, or if others can, they can exercise it only for honest and benevolent purposes.” “That, if true, would be reassuring,” I observed; “but, for myself, I revolt at the bare idea of being so completely in the power of another, however honest or well-disposed he may be. I choose to be my own, and not another’s.” CHAPTER III. FURTHER EXPERIMENTS. Dr. P—— continued his lectures, private instructions, and experiments for some months, and very soon they began to produce their natural effect. No people are more disposed to run after every novelty, or are naturally more fond of the marvellous than the Anglo-Americans. They live in a constant state of excitement, and are always craving some new stimulant. They have been transplanted from the old homestead, are without ancestors, traditions, old associations, or fixed habits transmitted from generation to generation through a long series of ages. They have descended, in great part, from the sects that separated in the seventeenth century from the Anglican Church, which had in the sixteenth century itself separated from the Church of Rome, and to a great extent broken with antiquity. They are a new people,—in many respects a child-people, with the simplicity, freshness, impressibility, unsteadiness, curiosity, caprice, and waywardness of children. They must have their playthings, and they no sooner obtain a new toy than they tire of it, throw it away, and seek another. Yet are they richly endowed, and they possess in the highest degree many of the nobler virtues of our nature. They are a poetical and imaginative, as well as a reasoning and practical people. They have a robust and not unkindly nature,—are susceptible of deep emotions, and capable of heroic deeds. They treat few subjects with absolute indifference, and seldom fail to give any one who has, or professes to have, something to say, a tolerably fair and patient hearing. Whoever is able to touch their fancy, stir their feelings, excite their curiosity, or their marvellousness, is pretty sure of having them run after him—for a time. Animal Magnetism soon became the fashion, in the principal towns and villages of the Eastern and Middle States. Old men and women, young men and maidens, boys and girls, of all classes and sizes, were engaged in studying the mesmeric phenomena, and mesmerizing or being mesmerized,—some declaring themselves believers, some expressing modestly their doubts, the majority, while half believing, loudly declaring themselves inveterate sceptics. Jack Wheatley very soon became a famous mesmerizer—for sport. He laughed at the whole concern, and yet he was the most successful of the mesmerizers, and his _subjects_ always behaved with great propriety, seldom, if ever, failing him, or disappointing the wondering spectators. Mr. Winslow, after hesitating a while, began to try experiments himself, and found that he had a wonderful magnetic power, especially over the young misses and spinsters of his congregation. He found by actual experiment, often repeated, and fully attested, that he could mesmerize without being in the same room with his subject, without any previous communication of his intent, and even persons with whom he had no acquaintance, and had never spoken. More than once he had thrown a young lady in an adjoining room into the magnetic slumber. Of this there could be no doubt. He knew well his own intention, and hundreds of witnesses were ready to depose to the fact of the slumber. At first he tried this experiment only upon those who had been previously mesmerized, but he afterwards tried it with brilliant success on others. But the marvel did not stop here. Mr. Winslow soon found that he could magnetize material objects, which in turn would magnetize persons. He wished to mesmerize a young lady, without communicating to her his wish. He mesmerized a glass of water, which was handed her by a person ignorant of what he had done, and of his intention. She drank of it, and in a very few minutes sank into a profound magnetic slumber, and exhibited the phenomena usually exhibited in artificial somnambulism. When I first heard of this experiment I laughed at it, for it seemed to me a wholly inadmissible fact. I could conceive it possible for mind to act on mind; for the will of the magnetizer to affect the will of the magnetized; but it was repugnant to all received science to suppose that mind or spirit can, without some natural medium, operate on material objects. But from what I subsequently saw and did myself, and what I was assured of by others, both competent and credible, I became convinced that I must admit it, or reject all human testimony. Mr. Winslow, once become a mesmerizer, very soon left Dr. P—— far behind. In pushing forward his investigations, he found that he could not only throw persons, not indeed every one, but one in twenty-five or thirty, into the mesmeric sleep, render them insensible, dead as it were to all the world except himself, but that he could develop in them, or superinduce upon them, a marvellous physical strength. I saw him place a weak and sickly boy in a chair on the platform of his lecture room, and so nerve his arm that not two of the strongest men could move it. He would, by his mental operation, so nail the chair to the floor that no force applied to it could raise it. He would throw the boy by the same operation upon the floor, render his whole body, neck, legs, arms, fingers, and toes, rigid, and stiff as a crowbar; then suddenly relax all his limbs, and render him as flexible as a reed—now fill him with rage, make him rave furiously, rush through the audience as one possessed, overthrowing every thing and every one in his way—now recall him, soothe his rage, make him cry and weep as if afflicted with the deepest and most inconsolable grief, and now dry at once his tears, and break forth into the wildest and maddest joy. These were singular phenomena. Whence this apparently superhuman strength? That certainly was no effect of complicity, for the boy exhibited a physical strength far surpassing that of both mesmerizer and mesmerized in their normal state. It could not be the effect of imagination. “For how,” said Mr. Winslow, “can you explain by imagination the effect produced on material objects? You see that I can magnetize a glass of water or a bunch of flowers. Do you pretend that these are endowed with imagination; are not only sensitive, but also intellectual, and even volitive? Have the most common material objects sense, intellect, and will? Imagination, highly excited, may indeed develop and concentrate the strength which one has, but how impart a strength which one has not?” “I have been studying these wonderful phenomena,” said Mr. Increase Mather Cotton, a rigid puritan minister of high standing, and who had accompanied me to see Mr. Winslow’s experiments, “and I think I see in them the works of the devil.” “Why, sir,” replied Mr. Winslow, “I do these things myself. My patients move and act, are paralyzed, laugh, cry, weep, rage, foam, run, fly, fight, or make love, at my will. Do you think I am the devil?” “Be not too confident,” replied Mr. Cotton. “You may yet find that, if not the devil yourself, that it is a devil, and a very base and wicked devil, that moves you, and uses you as the instrument of his malice.” “I have no belief,” answered Mr. Winslow, “in devils or demons, as separate and intelligent beings.” “I know very well, sir, that you are a Sadducee, and believe in neither angel nor spirit, although you would fain pass for a Christian minister,” replied, with a severe tone, the stanch puritan, whose great ancestor had taken so conspicuous a part in Salem witchcraft. “You do me wrong, Mr. Cotton,” replied Mr. Winslow. “I am a Christian, and no Sadducee. I believe in the Christian religion as firmly as you do. I do not deny angel or spirit. By _angel_ I understand what the word itself imports, a messenger, and by _spirit_, a power, force, or energy. But I do not suppose that I am to understand by either an order of beings distinct and separate from man. I concede the spiritual power or energy, but it is the power or energy of the human being; I grant the demonic character of these phenomena, but the force that produces them is the demonic force of human nature itself. There are no personal angels, and no personal devils or demons.” “And no personal God, you will say next, I presume,” replied Mr. Cotton with a sneer. “God is personal in me, in the human personality,” proudly answered Mr. Winslow. “Personality is a circumscription, a limitation; and God, since he is infinite, incapable of circumscription, cannot be personal in himself. He can be personal only in creatures, and consequently, only in such creatures as have personality, that is, men.” “Your notion of personality is of a piece with your whole miscalled theology,” replied Mr. Cotton. “Personality is the last complement of rational nature. If the nature is rational, that is, capable of intelligent and voluntary activity, and complete, it is a person, and if infinite, an infinite person. Your argument is a mere sophism, founded on a false definition of personality. A little philosophy or common sense would be of great service to such _Christian_ ministers as you are.” “Let us not,” I interposed, “get involved in a theological discussion. We are to investigate this subject as men of science, not as theologians. We have here a scientific subject, and science leaves theologians to their speculations, without presuming to intervene in their interminable, useless, and wearisome disputes. If your theology is true, it can never be in conflict with science.”