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 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.
