Insanity explains abnormal, but not superhuman phenomena. It is a disease of the body, not of the mind itself. The mind, being a simple spiritual or immaterial substance, is not susceptible of physical derangement, and mental alienation proceeds from the lesion or alteration of the bodily organs or conditions on which the mind is dependent in its manifestations. It is cured, when curable, by medical, not by purely spiritual treatment; by physic and good regimen, not by exorcisms.
A few days after the conversation I have detailed, my friends being again present, the subject was resumed. Dr. Corning sustained his hypothesis triumphantly by selecting such facts in the cases brought forward as it would explain, and by denying all the rest,—a very convenient and common practice of theorizers,—even out of the medical profession.
Mr. Sowerby, who had made a fortune by mesmerism and spirit-rapping, thought that only a monomaniac would attempt to explain the mysterious phenomena in question by insanity. There was in the cases not a symptom of mania, and the persons affected, in their moments of repose, and even while the affection lasted, were in the normal exercise of their faculties, and indicated no signs of mental alienation, answering always, when answering at all, pertinently, never at random, consecutively, never incoherently, as is the case with the insane. He explained them, not by mental alienation, but by the accumulation or increased activity of a great and all pervading principle, perhaps the vital principle itself, called the mesmeric or odic principle. He had himself produced phenomena analogous to the most extraordinary recorded in history.
Mr. Dodson, an ex-Universalist minister, mentioned on a former occasion, and who had just published a book on spirit-manifestations, in refutation of Judge Edmands’s work on the same subject,—a great and original thinker, and most profound philosopher,—in his own estimation,—thought that they were all to be explained by phreno-mesmerism, or electro-psychology. He had an original theory, borrowed in part from Gall and Spurzheim, who might, to a certain extent, have borrowed it from the Timeus of Plato, that the back part of the brain is the seat of involuntary motion, instinct, and unconscious consciousness, that the anterior part is the seat of voluntary motion and reflection. The phenomena are artificially produced by psychologizing the subject, or paralyzing the anterior lobe of the brain, and leaving the posterior active, and, naturally, by a person’s sitting down quietly and suppressing the activity of the frontal brain, and giving free scope to the occipital. There was no devil, and no odic agent in the case. It was all explained by phreno-mesmerism, or by the passivity of some, and the increased activity of other portions of the brain. But he was asked how this could enable a person to foretell future events, to read the unexpressed thoughts of others, to manifest extraordinary physical strength, to understand and speak languages never learned, to tell what is passing in distant places, and to remain suspended in the air in defiance of the laws of gravitation. He said all these were psychological phenomena, or, as Dr. Corning called them, hallucinations, nothing of the sort really taking place.
Mr. Sowerby would not listen to him, and there was almost a quarrel between the two ex-ministers. But their rage being finally mollified by a witticism from Jack, the conversation resumed its pacific character.
“You say, Mr. Sowerby,” said Dr. Corning, “that you have produced phenomena analogous to those recorded in history?”
“Certainly,” answered Mr. Sowerby.
“And by the mesmeric or odic principle?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“What is your evidence of the existence of such a principle? or your proof that such a principle exists?”
“The phenomena I produce or find produced by it.”
“So, you take the phenomena to prove the principle, and the principle to explain the phenomena,” said Dr. Corning, who could reason as well as anybody when it concerned the refutation of a theory not his own.
“I am not disposed to question the existence of such a principle,” said Mr. Merton, “except in the form asserted by Mr. Dodson, or when it is explained as the immediate action of the mind or will of the mesmerizer upon the mesmerized. The fluid asserted by Mesmer, after the animal magnetists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as Wirdig, Fludd, Maxwell, Kircher, Van Helmont, simply revised by Baron Reichenbach with a great show of demonstration, though denied by Deleuze and some other mesmerists, I have no good reason for doubting. I am willing to concede the fact, that this fluid or agent exists and is employed by Mr. Sowerby in his experiments. I am willing to concede that there is a fluid or agent, not electricity, not magnetism, but analogous to them, contended for by Baron Reichenbach, that pervades a numerous class of bodies, and may be artificially accumulated, or stimulated to increased activity. But suppose this; suppose the mesmerizer, wizard, sorcerer, witch, magician, actually uses it, I must still ask Mr. Sowerby to tell me how he proves it to be the sole principle of the phenomena produced? That in most of the cases recorded, if not in all, there are proper mesmeric or odic phenomena, naturally or artificially produced, is, I think, undeniable. The flowers used by Grandier, in the case of the nuns of Loudun, and the fumigations and sufflations of the old magicians, all prove the resort to magnetism. The rod and tub of Mesmer, and the cumbrous machinery he used, though not indispensable, every magnetizer knows are a useful mean. But as these are only subsidiary, how is it to be demonstrated that mesmerism itself is the sole efficient cause, not merely of some of the accessory phenomena, but of them all? In the phenomena of table-turning, so extensively witnessed, magnetism is not absolutely essential. They began, as all the recent spirit-manifestations, in mesmerism, and at first the table was mesmerized by a circle formed round it, joining their hands and resting them on it.”
“The tables are turned,” said Dr. Corning, “by the involuntary and unconscious muscular contraction of the hands pressing upon it. This has been proved.”
“So says a French Academician, and so also says Professor Farraday, and tables, very likely, may be turned in some such way; but the table is frequently known to turn and cut up its capers without any circle being formed, without any person being near it, or visible hand touching it.”
“That is true,” said I, “for I have myself seen the most extraordinary phenomena of table-turning when it was certain no pressure, voluntary or involuntary, had been applied to it by any person visible in the room. I have seen a table turn in spite of the efforts of four strong men to hold it still, rise up without any visible agency, fly over the heads of the company, rush with violence from one end of the room to the other, spin round like a top, balance itself on one leg and then on another,—in fine, move along some inches on the floor with the weight of a dozen men resting on it, raise itself from the floor with them, and remain suspended a foot above it, for some minutes.”
“There can be no doubt of that,” said Mr. Merton. “In Cochin China, we are told on good authority, that in the time of the predecessors of Gia-long, it was a custom in the province of Xu-Ngué, on certain solemnities, to invite the most celebrated tutelar genii of the towns and villages of the kingdom to games and a public trial of their strength. A long and heavy bark, with eight benches of oars, was placed dry in the centre of a large hall, and the trial consisted in seeing which of these could move it farthest or with the greatest ease. The judges and spectators took their stand at a little distance, and saw, as they called the names and titles of the genii placed on the bark, the huge machine tip one side and then the other, and finally advance and then recede. Some of the genii would push it forward several feet, others only a few inches. But one who made it come and go with the greatest facility, was the tutelar genius of the maritime village of Ke-Chan, worshipped under the name of Hon-Leo-Hanh, whose temple was in consequence thronged with pilgrims, and enriched with votive offerings.”
“But conceding,” continued Mr. Merton, “that mesmerism plays its part, I wish to know how Mr. Sowerby proves that it alone suffices for the production of the phenomena? Is it not possible that another power steps in, and, either alone or in concurrence, produces them? May it not be that mesmerism only facilitates or prepares the way for the demonic action, produces the state or condition of the human subject favorable to Satanic invasion, and therefore is to be regarded rather as the occasion than as the efficient cause of the phenomena?”
“But I admit no devil; I do not believe that there are any demons,” said Mr. Sowerby.
“I am aware of that,” said Mr. Merton, “but I suppose that, notwithstanding your disbelief, there may be a devil, the prince of this world, as the Scriptures plainly teach. It is possible that there are whole legions of devils, that the air swarms with them, and that they have power to tempt and to vex and harass those they would seduce from allegiance to the Most High. Their non-existence, at least their non-intervention, must be proved before you are entitled to conclude that your mesmeric or odic agent is the sole efficient cause of the phenomena.”
“But that,” said Mr. Dodson, “would overthrow all the so-called inductive sciences.”
“If so, I cannot help it,” replied Mr. Merton. “The inductive philosophers have accumulated a mass of rich and valuable facts by their observations and experiments, for which I am grateful to them; but I set no great store by the ever-changing theories which they imagine or invent to explain these facts. But let this pass. If Mr. Sowerby’s mesmeric or odic force does not explain all the phenomena in the case, I presume that he will concede that it is not the sole principle of their production.”
“Certainly,” replied Mr. Sowerby.
“This odic agent, is it not a simple natural principle or force, and without reason or intelligence?”
“It is in itself unintelligent, I admit.”
“But in the phenomena there are evident marks of intelligence, which proceed neither from the mesmerizer nor the mesmerized. How do you explain that?”
“The intelligence is the instinctive or involuntary intelligence proceeding from the back part of the brain,” answered Mr. Dodson.
“Back part of whose brain?” asked Mr. Merton.
“The mesmerized or psychologized,” replied that philosophic gentleman.
“But there cannot proceed, voluntarily or involuntarily, instinctively or rationally, from the back brain or the front brain, what is not in it, or an intelligence which its owner does not possess. I do not now speak of the intelligence of either the operator or the one operated upon, but of an intelligence of a third party. In the recorded and undeniable phenomena to be explained there appears a third party, which acts intelligently, and gives information unknown to either of the other parties. Take the case of the spectre that appeared to Brutus before the battle of Pharsalia, or that which appeared to Julian on the eve of the battle in which he fell mortally wounded, and hundreds of similar cases.”
“They are mere hallucinations,” interposed Dr. Corning.
“What proves the contrary,” replied Mr. Merton, “is the fact that they had accurate knowledge of future events, which hallucinations have not. I place no stress on the fact that a prediction was uttered, or seemingly uttered, for that might be a hallucination; the point to be attended to is its literal fulfilment, showing a knowledge of the future not possessed by the individual to whom the prediction was made, nor, supposing mesmerism employed, by the mesmerizer. Here was an intelligent third party.
“There is a very well authenticated case of a domestic in the German village of Kleische, who, returning one evening from a place near by, where she had been sent of an errand, saw a little gray man, not larger than an infant, who, because she would neither go with him nor answer him, threatened her, and told her, as she reached the threshold of her master’s house, that she should be blind and dumb for four days. The prediction was exactly fulfilled. Instances enough are on record of persons afflicted, as they supposed, by evil spirits, who have foretold the day and hour when they would be delivered. In the case of the parsonage of Cideville, which in 1849 made so much noise in France, the agent that rapped was intelligent, for the raps gave distinct and intelligent answers to the questions addressed to it, and communicated facts unknown to the questioner and to all the persons present.
“The ancient pagan oracles may be cited. They did not, I concede, foretell what belongs exclusively to the supernatural providence of God, but they did foretell, clearly and distinctly, events belonging to the natural order, beyond the reach of ordinary human foresight. That many of the responses were false, that many of them were ambiguous and suited to the event, let it turn out which way it might, I by no means deny, but this cannot be said of all of them. The contrary is evident from the great reputation they enjoyed, and the long ages that they were consulted, not by the vulgar only, but by kings, princes, nobles, and philosophers, of the most learned and polite nations of Gentile antiquity. Men are deceived, deluded, but never by pure falsehood. It is the truth mingled with the falsehood that deceives or misleads them.”
“But the whole,” said Jack, “was a system of jugglery, cheatery, and knavery, of the heathen priests.”
“I do not defend,” replied Mr. Merton, “the ancient pagan superstitions, nor the strict honesty, any more than the immaculate purity, of the ancient priesthoods; but I have learned not to explain great effects by petty causes, like the shallow-pated philosophers of the last century, and the historians of the school of Voltaire, Hume, and Robertson, who had no more comprehension of the real causes and concatenation of events than a respectable goose. All heathenism was founded on delusion, but not a delusion originating with, and kept up by, the trickery and jugglery of priests, who were often greater dupes than any others. No art, craft, jugglery, or fraud, could be carried on for three thousand years in the bosom of cultivated nations without detection. There were men in ancient heathendom as able and as willing to detect human imposture, as are our modern philosophers, who tell us so gravely in their elaborate works how the priests contrived to work their miracles, and to keep the people in subjection. The only sound philosophy proceeds on the assumption of the general good faith of mankind, or that they dupe and are duped, save in individual cases, without malice prepense.
“In these oracles there was a superhuman intelligence, and an intelligence which was neither that of those who consulted nor that of those who gave the response, and it tells you itself why the oracles after the birth of our Saviour and the spread of Christianity, became mute.
Me puer Hebræus, divos Deus ipse gubernans,
Cedere sede jubet, tristemque redire sub Orcum;
Aris ergo dehinc tacitus abscedito nostris.
The Hebrew youth, himself God and master of the gods, had reduced them to silence. Whence this third intelligence? It cannot come from the odic agent, for that is unintelligent.”
“I do not agree with Mr. Sowerby,” said Mr. Winslow. “I believe all existence is intelligent, and all forces intelligent forces. God is infinite intelligence. He is the principle and similitude of all things, and therefore every thing must, like him, be intelligent.”
“That was my view,” said I, “or else I should have had no hesitation in explaining a large portion of the mysterious phenomena by the old notion of demonic invasion.”
“Yet this view,” replied Mr. Merton, “is decidedly untenable. God, in the sense of creator, is the principle of all things, and in the sense that the ideas or types after which he creates them are in his eternal reason, he is their similitude; but it is not necessary to suppose that every creature imitates him in all his attributes, which would suppose that a cabbage has intellect and will, and a granite block is endowed with charity. The infinite intelligence of God supposes that all are created, ordered, and governed by, and according to, intelligence, but not that every creature is intelligent, or an intelligence. We might as well say that every creature is infinite, for God is infinity, as well as intelligence.
“In the phenomena of demonopathy the patient is distinctly conscious of an intelligence not his own. The Mother Superior in the convent of Loudun was distinctly conscious that the words spoken by her organs did not proceed from her intelligence, and that they were uttered, not by her will, but against it. There is a thousand times more evidence of this third intelligence, and that it is personal, than Baron Reichenbach has adduced in proof of his odic agent. The nuns of Loudun knew what they did, and they struggled with all their might against the power that afflicted them. They knew as well that their words and actions proceeded from a foreign personality, and not from themselves, as you know that my words and actions do not proceed from you. They held in the greatest horror the blasphemous words their organs were made to utter, and the indecent postures they were made to assume, and sought deliverance by prayer and pious practices. That does not proceed from one’s own will, which he holds in horror, and struggles against.”
“The will and intelligence was that of Grandier, who mesmerized them. He, by the mesmeric agent, had placed himself in relation with them, and he moved them as a mesmerizer does his somnambulist,” said Mr. Sowerby.
“That Grandier persecuted them, and was in some sense near them, is what they uniformly asserted, and what I am not disposed to deny, but that it was he who possessed them, and used their organs, is not to be supposed; because one human being cannot thus possess another, and because the intelligence and will displayed surpassed his own. Grandier, if he afflicted them, did it only by means of a foreign power, foreign both to his personality and theirs, as even Mr. Sowerby contends; but this foreign power must have had, as is evident from the recorded phenomena, intelligence and will of its own.”
After a long discussion on this point, which I had hardly for a moment questioned, for I had proved it by my experiments with Priscilla, and with tables and inanimate objects, time and again, though I saw not all that it involved, all except the Doctor and Jack agreed that it must be so. The Doctor would not make an admission that required him to modify what he had written and published on insanity, and Jack would not hear a word on the subject. His experience was explicable on the assumption of hallucination, and he would not believe anybody had had a more marvellous experience than his own.
“But,” said Mr. Merton, “this wonder-working power, if it have intelligence and will, must be a spirit, good or bad, and, also a superhuman spirit, since the phenomena are superhuman.”
“So,” said Dr. Corning, “here we are in the middle of the nineteenth century, in this age of science, after so much has been said and written against the folly, ignorance, barbarism, and superstition of past ages, back in the old superstitious belief in demons, good and bad angels, ghosts and hobgoblins, fairies and ghouls, witches and witchcraft, sorcery and magic. Well, gentlemen, I have done. I am inclined to believe there must be a devil, for if there were no devil we could hardly have such poor success in bringing the world to reason, and curing it of superstition.”
“There may be more truth in what you say than you suspect,” said Mr. Merton. “The devil is the father of ignorance, credulity, and superstition, no less than of false science, infidelity, and irreligion.”
