Animal magnetism is an animal power—not a spiritual. All the animal qualities—organs—are located in the back and lower part of the brain. They act independent of reason. Passions have no reason. The affections have no reason. Anger and hate have none. The force, driving power of man is centred back of the ears. The cerebellum, or lower brain, acts independent of reason. Birds, and most of the animals, possess all the qualities that the cerebellum of man contains.
The upper brain—the cerebrum—is the instrument of our thoughts—our reason. In sleep, it is still; its action is suspended. Hence there is no reason in our dreams. The motive power is in the lower brain; hence somnambulism. If there is anything of a “trance” nature, it means shutting off the action of the cerebrum, and concentring the power in the cerebellum. Some persons have but little upper brain. If they have the other requisites, they may become good clairvoyants, or magnetizers, according to the manner in which they exercise the animal power.
I have yet to find a professional clairvoyant with large or active reasoning (intellectual) qualities.
Yet Room for more Discoveries.
The living blood has not yet been analyzed. It contains a vitalizing element which chemistry has not yet been adequate to detect. There is yet as much to be discovered in the science of life as has already been revealed to man. It will yet be found out.
How is the power, or force, conveyed from the operator to the person operated upon? Through what medium does it act?
Let us begin with the brain. Let us take a ball of cotton for our illustration. We draw out a piece from it, and spin it out to our fancy. It is a thread, but cotton still, twisted to a fine string. The brain is located at the top of man. By means of fine threads, called nerves, the brain is distributed over the entire body, so completely that you cannot stick a pin in the flesh without touching a nerve, wounding the brain. Suspend the entire action of the brain, as by ether, chloroform, or nitrous oxygen gas, and sticking the pin is not felt. Partially suspend the action, as by a small quantity of the nitrous oxygen gas, and the force of the brain (or active force) is centred upon the lower brain, and the man under its influence acts out his animal nature in spite of reason.
A man, I hold, who magnetizes or mesmerizes another, uses only the force of the lower brain. Like begets like. He cannot affect a person of large intellectual organs; only one with the animal organs active.
You cannot see the gas, yet it affects the person. You cannot see the subtile power conveyed from one man to a weaker. He conveys it by touch—nerve to nerve. I believe science will yet discover just what this subtile agent is—both in the blood and nerves; for it is in both, or why does the suspension of it in one destroy the other? Destroy the nerve, and the corresponding blood-vessel is inactive. Destroy the blood-vessel, and the corresponding nerve suffers.
It is the power that the mother exercises to hush her sobbing babe to slumber. As the child gathers strength of mind, she loses that control. A person may be used as a mesmeric subject until he becomes a mere idiotic machine. Educate a clairvoyant doctor, and what becomes of his clairvoyant power? It is lost with the increase of intellectual power. Now, is this a “divine” quality, that only ignorance can make use of? Is it really “hidden from the wise and prudent, and given to babes?” All sciences were practised by the uneducated first, before being reduced to a science. I think this will be yet reduced to a useful science. As it now stands, it is useless. If it is a spirit power, the spirits are mighty silent as to the fact.