5. With some imperfectly lucid patients, the exercise of their new faculties appears to be fatiguing, and to call for great exertion. So they are occasionally with difficulty led to answer at all; and then when inconsiderately pressed, they are tempted to say any thing, just to be left tranquil.
It is difficult to say how the preceding sources of error are to be effectually guarded against. Possibly, by rigid training from the first, the patient might be brought to distinguish false promptings from genuine intuitions. But even the latter vary in lucidity and certainty. This admission was made to a friend of mine by M. Alexis, the celebrated Parisian clairvoyante. The reader cannot fail to be interested by the following account, given by M. Alexis when entranced, of his own powers, and their mode of operation:—
“Pour voir des objets éloignés,” observed M. Alexis, “mon âme ne se dégage pas de mon corps. C’est ma volonté qui dérige mon âme, mon esprit, sans sortir de cette chambre où je suis. Si mon âme sortit, je serais mort; c’est ma volonté. Ma volonté suffit pour anéantir pour quelque tems la matière. Ainsi quand cette volonté est en jeu, la boite matérielle de mon individu n’est plus. Les murs, l’espace, et même le tems, n’existent plus. Mais ce n’est qu’un rêve plus ou moins lucide. Quelquefois ma vue est meilleure qu’à d’autres. Ma vue n’est jamais la même. Une fois je suis disposé pour voir une sorte de choses, et une autre fois une autre sorte. En regardant votre chambre dans un quartier éloigné d’ici, je ne vois pas les rues ni les maisons intermédiaires. La seule chose (alors) qui est dans la pensée est la personne qui me parle. Je vois les objets d’une manière plus incomplète que par mes sens, moins sure. Il serait impossible de fair comprendre comment je vois. Plus il y a de l’attraction—plus j’éprouve de l’attraction aux objets que je veux voir, ou qui me touche—plus il y a de lumière; plus j’éprouve de répulsion, plus il y a de ténèbres.”
IV. Of the Different Qualities of Od in different individuals.
IV. Of the Different Qualities of Od in different individuals.—Von Reichenbach observed the Od light to have different colours under different circumstances, and that, while Od-negative produces the sensation of a draft of cool air, Od positive produces a sense as of a draft of warm air. An easy way to verify the last phenomenon is to beg some one to hold the forefinger of the right hand pointed to your left palm, at a quarter of an inch distance, and afterwards his left forefinger to your right palm, when the two sensations, and their difference, are appreciable by the majority of persons.
Persons entranced by mesmeric procedures are often keenly alive to the above impressions. They see light emanating from the finger-tips of the mesmeriser, and feel an agreeable afflatus from his manipulations. Others who approach them affect them in different ways—some not disagreeably, while others excite a chilly, shivering feeling, and the patient begs they will keep off from him.
A gentleman narrated to me the following case. He had been for months in anxious attendance upon a brother who was in very delicate health, and exquisitely sensitive to mesmerism. My friend used himself to mesmerise his brother; but he found it necessary, in order to soothe and not excite him by the passes, to cover the patient with a folded blanket, so as to dull the agency of his Od-emanation. There was but another person, of several who had been tried, whose hand the brother could bear at all; this was a maid-servant, who herself was highly susceptible, and became entranced. She said that she perceived, when entranced, the suitableness of her influence, and that of the brother, to the patient; and she used the singular expression, that they were nearly of a colour. She said that the patient’s Od-emanation was of a pink colour, and that the brother’s was a brick colour—a flatter, deeper, red; and she endeavoured to find some one else with the same coloured Od to suit her master.
In some experiments made at Dr. Leighton’s house in Gower Street, I remember it was distinctly proved that each of the experimenters produced different effects on the same person. The patient was one of the Okeys, of mesmeric celebrity. The party consisted of Dr. Elliotson, Mr. Wheatstone, Dr. Grant, Mr. Kiernan, and some others. Mr. Wheatstone tabulated the results. Each of us mesmerised a sovereign; and it was found that on each trial the trance-coma, which contact with the thus mesmerised gold induced, had a characteristic duration for each of us. Is it possible that each living person has his distinguishable measure of Od, either in intensity or quality?
V. The Od-Force is the usual channel of establishing mesmeric relation.
V. The Od-Force is the usual channel of establishing mesmeric relation.—I take it for granted that the Od-force—the existence and some of the properties of which have been inductively ascertained by Von Reichenbach—is the same agent with that which Mesmer assumed to be the instrument in his operations. Then, in support of the above proposition, I cite two instances. Mr. Williamson, at my request, mesmerised and entranced the Rev. Mr. Fox at Weilbach, in the autumn of 1847. It was the second sitting, and Mr. Fox was beginning to pass from the initiatory stage of trance into trance half-waking. Mr. Williamson addressed him, and he returned an answer. Other parties in the room, including myself, then addressed Mr. Fox, and he seemed not to hear one of us. Then Mr. Williamson gave me his hand, and I again spoke to Mr. Fox; he then heard me, and spoke in answer. When, having left go Mr. Williamson’s hand, I spoke again to Mr. Fox, he heard me not. On my renewing contact with Mr. Williamson, Mr. Fox heard me again. He heard me as long as I was brought into relation with him, and that relation was clearly due to the establishment of an Od-current between myself and Mr. Williamson, with whom Mr. Fox was already in trance-relation. Every one who has seen something of Mesmerism will recognise in the above story one of its commonest phenomena.