I by no means affirm that the claims of Spiritualism are disproved by these failures; but I do contend that until the evidence advanced by believers in those claims has stood the test of the same sifting and crossexamination by sceptical experts, that would be applied in the case of any other scientific enquiry, it has no claim upon general acceptance; and I shall now proceed to justify that contention by an appeal to the history of previous enquiries of the like kind.

MESMERISM.

It was about the year 1772, that Mesmer, who had previously published a dissertation On the Influence of the Planets on the Human Body, announced his discovery of a universal fluid, 'the immediate agent of all the phenomena of nature, in which life originates, and by which it is preserved;' and asserted that he had further discovered the power of regulating the operations of this fluid, to guide its current in healthy channels, and to obliterate by its means the tracks of disease. This power he in the first instance professed to guide by the use of magnets; but having quarrelled with Father Hell, a professor of astronomy at Vienna, who had furnished him with the magnets with which he made his experiments, and who then claimed the discovery of their curative agency, Mesmer went on to assert that he could concentrate the power in, and liberate it from, any substance he pleased, could charge jars with it (as with electricity) and discharge them at his pleasure, and could cure by its means

the most intractable diseases.1 Having created a great sensation in Bavaria and Switzerland by his mysterious manipulations, and by the novel effects which they often produced, Mesmer returned to Vienna, and undertook to cure of complete blindness a celebrated singer Mdlle. Paradis, who had been for ten years unsuccessfully treated by the court physician. His claim to a partial success, however, which was in the first instance supported by his patient, seemed to have been afterwards so completely disproved by careful trials of her visual powers, that he found himself obliged to quit Vienna abruptly; and he thence proceeded to Paris, where he soon produced a great sensation. The state of French society at that time, as I have already remarked, was peculiarly favourable to his pretensions. A feverish excitability prevailed, which caused the public mind to be violently agitated by every question it took up. And Mesmer soon found it advantageous to challenge the Learned Societies of the capital to enter the lists against him; the storm of opposition which he thus provoked having the effect of bringing over to his side a large number of devoted disciples and ardent partisans. He professed to distribute the magnetic fluid to his congregated patients, from a baquet or magnetic tub which he had impregnated with it, each individual holding a rod which proceeded from the baquet; but when the case was particularly interesting, or likely to be particularly profitable, he took it in hand for personal magnetisation. All the surroundings were 1 Appendix D.

such as to favour, in the hysterical subjects who constituted the great bulk of his patients, the nervous. paroxysm termed the 'crisis,' which was at once recognised by medical men as only a modified form of what is commonly known as a 'hysteric fit;' and the influence of the imitative' tendency was strongly manifested just as in cases where such fits run through a school, nunnery, factory, or revivalist meeting, in which a number of suitable subjects are collected together. And it was chiefly on account of the moral disorders to which Mesmer's proceedings seemed likely to give rise, that the French Government directed a Scientific Commission, including the most eminent savans of the time-such as Lavoisier, Bailly, and Benjamin Franklin-to enquire into them. After careful investigation they came to the conclusion that there was no evidence whatever of any special. agency proceeding from the baquet; for not only were they unable to detect the passage of any influence from it, that was appreciable, either by electric, magnetic, or chemical tests, or by the evidence of any of their senses; but on blindfolding those who seemed to be most susceptible to its supposed influence, all its ordinary effects were produced when they were without any connection with it, but believed that it existed. And so, when in a garden of which certain trees had been magnetised, the patients, either when blindfolded, or when ignorant which trees had been magnetised, would be thrown into a convulsive fit if they believed themselves to be near a magnetised tree,

but were really at a distance from it; whilst, conversely, no effect would follow their close proximity to one of these trees, while they believed themselves to be at a distance from any of them. Further, the Commissioners reported that, although some cures might be wrought by the Mesmeric treatment, it was not without danger, since the convulsions excited were often violent and exceedingly apt to spread, especially among men feeble in body and weak in mind, and almost universally among women; and they dwelt strongly also on the moral dangers which, as their enquiries showed, attended these practices.'

Now this Report, although referring to a form of Mesmeric procedure which has long since passed into disrepute, really deals with what I hold to be an important principle of action, which, long vaguely recognised under the term 'imagination,' now takes a definite rank in Physiological science;-namely, that in individuals of that excitable nervous temperament which is known as 'hysterical' (a temperament by no means confined to women, but rare in healthy and vigorous men), the expectation of a certain result is often sufficient to evoke it. Of the influence of this 'expectancy' in producing most remarkable changes in the bodily organism, either curative or morbid, the history of Medicine affords abundant and varied. illustrations; I shall presently show you that it can generate sensations of a great variety of kinds; and I shall further prove that it operates no less remarkably in calling forth movements, which, not being Appendix E.

consciously directed by the person who executes them, have been attributed to hypothetical 'occult' agencies.

I shall not trace the further history of Mesmer, or of the system advocated by himself; contenting myself with one ludicrous example of the absurdity of his pretensions. When asked in his old age by one of his disciples, why he ordered his patients to bathe in river-water in preference to well-water, he replied that it was because river-water is exposed to the sun's rays; and when further asked how these affected it in any other way than by the warmth they excited, he replied, "Dear doctor, the reason why all water exposed to the rays of the sun is superior to all other "water, is because it is magnetised-since twenty years "ago I magnetised the sun!"

In the hands of some of his pupils, however, Animal Magnetism, or Mesmerism (as it gradually came to be generally called), assumed an entirely new development. It was discovered by the Marquis de Puysegur, a great landed proprietor, who appears to have practised the art most disinterestedly for the sole benefit of his tenantry and poor neighbours,that a state of profound insensibility might be induced by very simple methods in some individuals, and at state akin to somnambulism in others; and this discovery was taken up and brought into vogue by numerous mesmerisers in France and Germany, while, during the long Continental war and for some time afterwards, it remained almost unknown in England.

Attention seems to have been first drawn to it