The spirit-rapper; an autobiography
do not recognize their personality, nor their superhuman character.”
“Perhaps,” said I, “Mr. Winslow is a little too hasty in supposing them
to be the innate power or force of human nature. This power exerted by
the mesmerizer may well be natural and yet not be human. It may be one
of the mighty forces of universal nature, which the mesmerizer has the
secret of using or bringing to bear in the accomplishment of his own
purposes. In mesmerism, perhaps, we may find the key to the mysteries of
nature, and the secret of rendering practically available all the great
and mighty powers at work in nature’s laboratory, so that a man may
learn to strengthen himself with all the force of the entire universe.”
“The power you speak of,” said Mr. Wilson, an ex-Unitarian parson, and
who passed for a Transcendentalist, “I believe to be very real. We
sometimes ascribe it to the will, and it is true that under certain
relations the will has great energy, and is well nigh invincible. Yet it
is not, I apprehend, so much the energy of the will itself as of faith,
which brings the will into harmony with the primordial laws of the
universe, and strengthens it by all the forces of nature. ‘If ye had
faith as a grain of mustard seed,’ said Jesus, ‘ye could say to this
mountain, be removed and planted in yonder sea, and it should obey you.’
I am far from being able to prescribe the limits of full, undoubting,
and unwavering faith. Faith is thaumaturgic, always a miracle-worker,
and if we could only undertake with a calm and full confidence of
success, I have little doubt but the meanest of us might work greater
miracles than any recorded in history. ‘If ye believe, ye shall do
greater works than these.’”
“There is more in this power of faith than received philosophy has
fathomed. By it one’s eyes are opened, and he seems to penetrate the
profoundest mysteries of the universe, even to the essence of the
Godhead. We may mark it in all our undertakings. Whatever we attempt,
nothing doubting, we are almost sure to accomplish. Let me, as a public
speaker, desire to produce a certain effect, and let me have full
confidence that I shall succeed, and I am sure not to fail. Let me utter
a sentiment, with my whole soul absorbed in it, confident that it is
going right to the hearts of my hearers, and it goes there. Whenever I
am conscious in what I am saying, of this calm, undoubting faith, I am
sure of my audience. I no sooner open my lips than I have them under my
control, and I can do with them as I please. When I have felt this faith
in what I was about to utter, I have felt before uttering it, its effect
upon the assembly, and my whole frame has been sensible of something
like an electric shock, and it seemed that my audience and I were
connected by a magnetic chain. In conversing with a friend, in whom I
have full faith, and to whom I can speak with full confidence, I have
felt the same. Our souls seem to be melted into one, to move with one
and the same will, and each to be exalted and strengthened by the
combined power of both. Then rise we into the upper regions of truth,
far above the unaided flight of either. Heaven opens to us, and we
behold the hidden things of God. Something the same is felt also when
one goes forth in love with nature, and yields to her gentle and
hallowing influences. We inhale power with her fragrant odors, become
conscious of purer, loftier and holier thoughts and feelings, and form
stronger and nobler resolutions.”
“All that,” said Mr. Cotton, “is common enough, but it is easily
explained by sympathy and imagination.”
“But,” Mr. Wilson replied, “what, then, is the power of sympathy or
imagination? That is a question I cannot answer. I yield to the power,
enjoy it, and question it not. Begin to question it, and it is gone. I
know well that philosophers call the power I speak of under one aspect,
love, under another, sympathy, under another, imagination, under still
another, faith, but what it is in itself they cannot tell me. Be it what
it will, it is demonic, supernatural, an element in human nature, of
which men in all ages have had glimpses, but of which none of us have as
yet had any thing more. The history of our race everywhere bristles with
prodigies. These prodigies were once regarded as miracles, and supposed
to be wrought by the finger of God; now an unbelieving age treats them
as impostures, cheats, fabrications, proving only people’s love of the
marvellous, their natural proneness to superstition, and the ease with
which they can be gulled by the crafty and the designing. I believe
them, for the most part, real. I believe that there are times when man
has a power over the elements, and can make the spirits obey him. Who
knows but the time may come, perhaps is now near, when the law by which
this power operates will be discovered, and this power, which has
hitherto been irregular and transient in its manifestations, will became
common and regular, and therefore bear the marks of a fixed and
permanent law of nature?
“But, call it what you will, it is not identical with the human will,
nor in my opinion is it, strictly speaking, a property of human nature.
It is an overshadowing, an all-pervading power, identical, most likely,
with that Power which creates and manifests itself in the universe. We
can avail ourselves of it, not because it is ours, but by placing
ourselves in harmony with it, within its focal range, and suffering its
rays to be all concentred in us.”
“That is substantially my own view,” remarked Mr. Winslow, “and I regard
mesmerism as revealing the regular and permanent means by which we can
avail ourselves of that creative and miracle-working power. I do not
pretend that man is thaumaturgic in himself, as distinguished from the
Being from whom his life emanates, but by virtue of his union with the
Fountain of All Force.”
“I think,” said Mr. Sowerby, an ex-Methodist elder, “that by magnetism,
we shall be able to explain the operations of the Holy Ghost, and the
mysteries of regeneration.”
“More likely,” interrupted Mr. Cotton, “the operations of Satan, and the
Mystery of Iniquity.”
“Yes, but in a sense thou dost not mean,” interposed Obediah Mott, a
Hicksite Quaker. “Thou knowest how difficult it is for thee to explain
the Popish miracles, many of which thou knowest come exceedingly well
attested. Mesmerism will show thee, that they were wrought by mesmeric
influences.”
“But I have no wish to explain Popish miracles on a principle that would
take from Christian miracles all their value. I hate popery, but I love
the Gospel more.”
The conversation was continued for some time, in the small circle around
me. In another part of the room they had got a somnambulist, and were
making various experiments. When the larger part of the company had
dispersed, I requested Mr. Winslow to try if he could not mesmerize me.
He did not think he should succeed. He thought I had not the sort of
temperament to be magnetized; that I had too strong a will, too robust a
constitution, and quite too vigorous health. It would at any rate
require far more mesmeric power than he had to subdue me. However, he
would try, and do what he could.
I seated myself in an arm chair, with my feet to the south, and Mr.
Winslow began with his passes. The first ten minutes he produced not the
slightest effect, for I resisted him by the whole force of my will. At
length I closed my eyes, and resigned myself to his influence. I now
became aware of his passes, though they were made without actually
touching me. It seemed as if slight electric sparks were emitted from
the tips of his fingers, producing a slight, but agreeable, and as it
were a cooling sensation. I felt slight spasmodic affections at the pit
of my stomach, which gradually became violent. My arms made involuntary
motions, and my legs and feet felt light and flew up as he extended his
passes over them. I had not the least inclination to sleep, but found
that he was actually exerting an influence over my body greater than at
all pleased me. I tried, and found that I could arrest his influence if
I willed, and that he had power over me only so long as I offered no
voluntary opposition. I alternately yielded and resisted, and found that
he had no power to overcome my own will. He operated for about an hour,
with no other effects than those I have mentioned, and gave up the task
of putting me to sleep as hopeless. The most remarkable thing about it,
that I recollect, though it did not much strike me at the time, was,
that although my eyes were closed, I saw or seemed to see distinctly,
slight luminous appearances at the ends of his fingers as he made his
passes. These luminous appearances were in rapid motion, and seemed of a
bluish tinge edged with yellowish white.
There was nothing in the experiment that could establish the reality of
the mesmeric influence to bystanders, but there was enough to satisfy me
that it was neither jugglery nor imagination. I could easily see from
the experiment, that upon persons differently constituted from myself,
less accustomed to self-control, and to the quiet analysis of their own
feelings, much greater and more striking effect must have been produced.
I never submitted myself to an experiment of the sort again. I found
that in my own case it was quite unnecessary, and that I could do all
that the mesmerized could without being thrown into the somnambulic
state. I commenced from that time to practise mesmerism myself. I
entered upon a course of experiments which carried me much farther than
the masters I was acquainted with. I found, that while no machinery for
magnetizing was absolutely indispensable, yet passes with the hand were
serviceable, and that the tub and rod of Mesmer, which had been
discarded, were of great assistance. Metallic balls, properly prepared,
and magnetized, and placed in the hand of the person to be affected, as
practised by the Electro-Biologists, very much facilitated the process.
I was thus brought back to Mesmer, and induced to reject the doctrine of
the ultra-spiritualists, who would have it that the effects are produced
by the simple will acting on the will of the person to be mesmerized.
There was certainly a fluid in the case, whether electric, magnetic, or
as the Baron Riechenbach would say, _odic_, and whether it is to be
regarded as efficient cause or only as an instrument, as maintained by a
recent French author, who seems to have studied the whole subject with
rare patience, and yet rarer good sense.
CHAPTER VI.
TABLE TURNING.
The point to which I at first directed my attention was to ascertain the
power, which, by means of mesmerism, I might acquire over the elemental
forces of nature. I found that with or without actual contact I could at
will paralyze the whole body of another, subject it in great measure to
my own will, and force it to obey my bidding. I could render it
preternaturally weak and preternaturally strong. I found also that I
could produce all these effects at a distance, by means of magnetized
inanimate objects. For instance, I would magnetize a bunch of flowers,
and a person knowing nothing of what I had done, who should take them up
and smell of them, would exhibit all the usual phenomena of the
mesmerized. Here it was evident that the mesmeric power, whatever it
might be, could act directly on matter, and lodge itself in a material
object. It was clear then that the mesmeric phenomena had a real
objective cause, and therefore could not be the effects either of
imagination or hallucination. Here was a most striking and important
fact, and one which entirely refuted the ultra spiritualism of the
majority of mesmerizers.