The spirit-rapper; an autobiography
no longer be the puny thing I had been. Henceforth I would be a man; a
man in the full and lofty sense of the word. Now suddenly my soul seemed
to grow, and to become too large for my body, against which it beat as
the prisoner beats his head against the walls of his prison-house. I
knew not then the source or nature of these feelings, and I cherished
them as precious intimations of my affinity with the Origin and Source
of all things. At times I was elated; my eye glowed with an unwonted
fire, and sparkled with an unearthly brilliancy; my step was elastic,
and my whole frame seemed to have received new youth and buoyancy, and
to be in some measure withdrawn from the ordinary laws of gravitation.
It seemed as if all the great forces of nature flowed into me, and
become subject to my will. Nothing was impossible to me.
CHAPTER V.
SOME PROGRESS.
Hitherto I had neither been magnetized myself nor magnetized others. I
had read the principal works which had been written in French and
English on the subject, and had witnessed and carefully analyzed the
experiments made by my friends; but now I madly resolved to make
experiments for myself.
A portion of the winter of 1841-2 I spent in Philadelphia, and as my
acquaintance was principally with the Hicksite Quakers, Unitarians,
Swedenborgians, Universalists, and open unbelievers in all religion, I
was, as a matter of course, thrown into the very circles where Animal
Magnetism, as well as all conceivable novelties and absurdities, were
the order of the day. My friends and associates were nearly all
philanthropists and world-reformers. There were among them seers and
seeresses, enthusiasts and fanatics, socialists and communists,
abolitionists and anti-hangmen, radicals and women’s-rights men of both
sexes; all professing the deepest and most disinterested love for
mankind, and claiming to be moved by the single desire to do good to the
race. All agreed that hitherto every thing had gone wrong; all agreed in
denouncing all forms of religion and government that had hitherto
obtained amongst men; all agreed in declaiming against the clergy of all
denominations, in manifesting their indignation against all political
and civil rule, and whatever tended in the least to restrain the
passions of individuals or the multitude, in asserting the wonderful
progress of the human race during the last hundred years, and in
predicting that a new era was about to dawn for the world; but beyond
this I could find scarcely a point on which any two of them were not at
loggerheads.
I cannot say that the differences I found among these excellent people
when it concerned their philanthropic projects or their various schemes
of world-reform, edified me much, but I was charmed with their
disinterestedness, with their zeal, and their superiority to the
restraints of popular prejudice, and what they stigmatized as
conventionalism. I was above all delighted to observe the new importance
assumed in behalf of woman; and it was a real pleasure to hear a
charming young lady, whose face a painter might have chosen for his
model, in a sweet musical voice, and a gentle and loving look, which
made you all unconsciously take her hand in yours, defend our great
grandmother Eve, and maintain that her act, which an ungrateful world
had held to have been the source of all the vice, the crime, the sin and
misery of mankind, was an act of lofty heroism, of noble daring, of pure
disinterested love for man. Adam, but for her, would have tamely
submitted to the tyrannical order he had received, and the race would
never have known how to distinguish between good and evil. How, with the
sweet young lady—I see and hear her now—sitting on a stool near me,
laying her hand in the fervor of her argument on mine, and looking up
with all the witchery of her eyes into my face, how could I fail to be
convinced that man is cold, calculating, selfish, and cowardly, and that
the world cannot be reformed without the destruction of the male (it
might be called the _mal_) organization of society, the elevation of
woman to her proper sphere, and the infusion into the government and
management of public and private affairs, some portion of the love, the
daring, the enthusiasm, and disinterestedness of woman’s heart? There
was nothing to be said in reply.
But alas! unhappy Saint Simonians; you believed also that the evils
endured by the race were owing, in great measure, to the fact that
society had hitherto been organized and governed by men as distinguished
from women, and therefore without the female element. You would in your
reorganization of the world, avoid this sad mistake. You could not agree
on the definitive organization of mankind till you had obtained the
voice of woman. But how obtain that from woman, the slave of the old
male organization? A _Père suprême_ you had found, but a woman to sit by
his side as _Mère suprême_, and to exercise with him equal authority,
you found not, and could proceed no further. You selected twelve
apostles, and sent them forth in search of a _Mère suprême_. They
searched France, England, Germany, Italy, all Europe, even to the harem
of the Grand Turk, but they found her not, and returned and reported
their ill-success. Then fear and consternation seized you; then fell
despair took possession of your souls; then you saw all your hopes
blasted, and you separated and dissolved in thin air. Perhaps, if you
had sent your apostles to the United States, to Philadelphia or Boston,
you might have succeeded, and Père Enfantin not have vanished from
Paris, the capital of the world, to waste himself as an engineer in the
service of Mehemet Ali.
It was a real pleasure to find these men of advanced views, and these
women of burning hearts and strong minds, who had outgrown the narrow
prejudices of their sex, all substituting the love of mankind for the
love of God. They all agreed that philanthropy was the highest virtue,
and the only virtue. Charity was an obsolete virtue, no longer in use,
and not suited to our advanced stage of human progress. That taught us
to love man in God, but we have learned to love God in man; that is, man
himself, without any reference to God. This was charming, and
emancipated us from our thraldom to priests, and all old-fashioned
religion. What was better still, I found that even this noble
philanthropy received a very liberal interpretation, and did not
interfere at all with those pleasant passions and vices, called anger,
spite, envy, &c. It was only a love of man in the abstract, the love of
mankind in general, which permitted the most sublime hatred or
indifference to all men in particular. Wonderful nineteenth century! I
exclaimed; wonderful seers and seeresses, and most delightful moralists
are these modern world-reformers!
In this pleasant and delightful circle mesmerism attracted its full
share of attention. I met it in almost every circle where I happened to
be present. It seemed to take the place of cards, music, and dancing.
One evening I was at a friend’s house, where were collected some
twenty-five or thirty gentlemen and ladies, or perhaps I should say,
ladies and gentlemen, mainly on my account, for I was, in a small way,
something of a lion, and our people are great in lionizing whenever they
have an opportunity, as Dickens, Kossuth, Padre Gavazzi, and others
hardly less worthy can abundantly testify. Indeed, our people are
democrats only from envy and spite. In their souls they are the most
aristocratic people in the world, and would be so avowedly, only they
have no legitimate aristocracy. Democracy has its origin in the
feeling,—since I am as good as you, and since I cannot be an aristocrat,
you shall be a democrat with me.
In this private party there were two or three somnambulists, and twice
that number of mesmerizers. My friend, Mr. Winslow, from Boston, was
present, and also Mr. Cotton, who was in the city on some business
pertaining to holding a world’s convention in London for evangelizing
France, Italy, and other benighted countries of Europe. Mr. Winslow was
in high spirits. He was sure that he was making out his proofs that
there is a demonic element in human nature, never once reflecting, that
if demonic it is not human.
“I am,” said he, “on the point of rehabilitating history. Miracles,
divinations, sorceries, magic, the black arts, which surprise us in all
history, sacred and profane, and which are either denied outright, or
ascribed to supernatural agencies, I think I shall be able to accept, as
facts, as real phenomena, and explain on natural principles. I think I
have in mesmerism an explanation of them all.”
“So you imagine that with mesmerism you may take your place with the
magicians of Egypt, and enter into a successful contest with Moses,”
said Mr. Cotton. “You forget that those magicians were discomfited, and
at the third trial were obliged to give up and acknowledge themselves
beaten. ‘The finger of God is here.’”
“Moses was a superior mesmerizer, and he mesmerized for a good, and they
for a bad purpose, which makes all the difference in the world,” replied
Mr. Winslow.
“But these magicians, then, could exercise the mesmeric power up to a
certain point, and for evil; I thought it was a doctrine of mesmerizers,
that none but virtuous and honest men could mesmerize, and these only
for a good and honest purpose,” said Mr. Cotton.
“I am not,” said I, “particularly interested in explaining what the
Germans call the Night-Side of nature, or the marvellous deeds recorded
in sacred and profane history; I would be able to do those deeds,
reproduce those wonderful phenomena, and exert myself a power over the
primordial elements or primitive forces of nature, be they spirits, be
they what they will. I am tired of being pent up within this narrow
cage, and of being the slave of every external influence. I would master
nature; ride upon the whirlwind and direct the storm. There may, for
aught I know, be an element of truth in the marvellous machinery of the
Arabian Nights Entertainments, and something more than the extravagances
of an Oriental imagination in those tales of magic, of good and evil
Genii. What, if the tale of Aladdin’s Lamp were true? Who dare say that
the river and ocean gods, the Naiads, the Dryads, Hamadryads, Pan and
his reed, Apollo and his lyre, Mercury and his wand, the supernal and
infernal gods of classic poetry, were all mere creatures of the poetic
imagination? Perhaps even the _diablerie_ of modern German romance, of
Hoffman, Baron de Fouquè, and others, has more of reality than most
readers suspect.”
“All the gods of the Gentiles were devils,” replied Mr. Cotton, “and to
a considerable extent I concede the reality you intimate. There are good
angels and bad, and both have intercourse with mankind. The air swarms
with evil spirits, with devils, fallen angels, endowed with a more than
human intelligence, and a more than human power. These are under a chief
called Lucifer, Beelzebub, Satan, who seeks to seduce men from their
allegiance to God, to make them receive him for their master, to put him
in the place of God, and to pay him divine honors. It was this fallen
angel, the prince of this world as St. Paul calls him, and the prince of
the powers of the air, who everywhere and unceasingly besieges the
Christian, and against whom we have to be constantly on the guard, that
the ancient Gentiles literally worshipped as God, and it is these evil
spirits, these powers of the air, that swarm around us, and infest all
nature, that ancient classic poetry celebrates, and that your modern
philosophers would persuade us were mere poetic fancies.”
“The powers or forces themselves, I concede,” said Mr. Winslow, “but I