The part-physical character of these phenomena is shown by an observation of Dr. Petetin’s on the first of his cataleptic patients. At the time that the patient heard with the pit of her stomach, he found that if with the fingers of one, say the left hand, he touched the pit of her stomach, and whispered to the fingers of his right hand, the patient heard him; but if the left hand was removed to the smallest possible distance from the patient, the contact being interrupted, she no longer heard him. Then he made a chain of seven persons, holding each other’s hands. The nearest to the patient was her sister, who touched the pit of her stomach; at the other end was Dr. Petetin, who whispered to his fingers, and was heard. A cane was then introduced as part of the circuit—the patient still heard; but if a stick of sealing-wax, or a glass rod, was substituted for it, or if one of the party wore silk gloves, the patient could no longer hear Dr. Petetin. Without close observation, what is physical in the phenomena which have thus engaged us is liable to be overlooked; and the bystander may class them as examples of lucidity, which they are not. Organic co-operation may be traced in them all. Thus, among Mr. Williamson’s earlier experiments, he tried, sitting before the entranced person, (who had shown no lucidity,) by imaging strongly to himself a white horse, to force the image into her mind. When, being awakened, she had left the room, on her way she said to her fellow-servant, “What was it master said to me about a white horse? I am sure he said something.” Mr. Williamson, on learning the maid’s remark, supposed his mental operation had been successful. But the same experiment, when repeated, mostly failed. At last he found out why: It only succeeded when, in his mental urgency, he half made in his own throat the motions of the sounds that expressed the mental image. Then, and then only, the patient caught it. For her mind could not read his thoughts, but as yet had penetrated the inferior part of the nervous system only, the cranio-spinal cord; and, being there, had adopted sympathetically the voluntary impulses that were there performed; so she half-moved the muscles of her own vocal organs to express the idea, and from that—its imperfect expression—received it into her thoughts. No doubt the phenomenon of Victor’s singing the words to M. de Puységur’s mentally hummed air was the same with the above, and not one of mesmeric lucidity, the subject which we are now approaching.
But I pause;—and go no further.
For my object in these Letters, generally, has been to establish principles. And the phenomena of lucidity developed in artificial trance have been only the same as, and have not been as yet made more of than, the lucidity of catalepsy. No further principle has yet emerged from their study; and my special object in this Letter has been to persuade the opponents of mesmerism to do it justice; and I think I am most likely to attain my end by not attempting to prove too much.
So that nothing remains for me to do, but to observe the form in which these Letters were originally shaped, in recollection of the pleasant hours which the residence of your family at Boppard, during the winter of 1844-5, caused me, and to say finally,
Dear Archy, Farewell.
LETTER XI.
Supplemental.—Abnormal neuro-psychical relation—- Cautions necessary in receiving trance communications—Trance-visiting—Mesmerising at a distance, and by the will—Mesmeric diagnosis and treatment of disease—Prevision—Ultra-vital vision.
The principal alterations made in “the Letters” for the present edition comprise an expansion of my account of “trances of spontaneous occurrence,” and the introduction of greater precision into our elementary conceptions of the relations of the mind and nervous system.
Letters V., VI., VII., and VIII., establish that the most startling phenomena in popular superstitions, and the most wonderful performances by mesmerised persons, are but repetitions of events, the occurrence of which, as symptoms of, or as constituting, certain rare forms of nervous attacks, have been independently authenticated and put on record by physicians of credit. Letters II. and IX. exemplify the mode in which superstition has dressed up trance-phenomena; as letters III. and IV. display the contributions she has levied on sensorial illusions, the Od force, and normal exoneural psychical phenomena. Letter X. describes the method of inducing trances artificially, whereby they may be reproduced at pleasure, either in the interests of philosophical inquiry, or for important practical purposes.