CONTENTS.
MESMERISM AND ESTABLISHED PHILOSOPHY.
Long as clairvoyance has remained the riddle, jest and wonder of the world, it is questioned by none why the established philosophy of this superiorly enlightened age is incompetent to account for this or any other mesmerically produced phenomenon, or afford the least glimmer of light by which it were possible to arrive at the physiology. Why the philosophy of Aristotle, Bacon, Newton, Des Cartes, Davy, Liebig—honoured names, and most justly, as the ancient and modern fathers in science—can afford no scintillation whereby to lessen the obscurity in which this most interesting subject is involved, should appear strange and unaccountable to all lovers of philosophy. By Professors the question should be answered. To consider it unworthy of being looked into, would be a tacit confession that Professors are indifferent to the natural truth; which proves all such to be but half reasoners, and not philosophers, notwithstanding all their mathematical learning and experimental experience.
It should have been questioned long since, whether the philosophy be not untrue which leaves all mankind in the dark, in a mere physical case, however mysterious the psychological result, the effect of manual application, and in the power of almost every person to produce. The mesmerising operation and effect includes nothing of necromancy or trick; is openly performed, and produced mechanically; and although the passes make a living being appear as if in a novel state of existence, the immediate effect, polarisation of the extremities of the body, is the same precisely as is effected on the iron bar when passed along the poles of a loadstone. This, and numerous other physical phenomena, which to the present day remain unexplained, and as if inexplicable, afford much reason for at least the conjecture, that modern philosophy is not the philosophy of physical nature; which, if not, it must be false and misleading, inasmuch as there can be but one philosophy, by reason of there being but one species of matter throughout all nature, and but one cause of action,—the general pressure. From which it follows, that as the philosophy of nature is that of matter universally, there can be no physical phenomenon which it does not explain. Therefore, the phenomena which modern philosophy has neither laws nor rules competent to explain, are so many proofs that the established philosophy of the age is false philosophy; which is provable throughout all its particulars, however rash and adventurous may appear the announcement. Besides, at the present day, there are several different philosophies maintained; every profession has its own; which is proof of the strongest nature that not one is true, dissent from the truly natural being impossible, so universally is it applicable. Eventually it will be admitted that the philosophy of the nineteenth century is founded on the crude ideas of the imperfectly learned in the earliest days of science, ever since adopted, and never investigated, instead of being deduced solely from the inert nature of matter, the only true basis. On modern philosophy, Davy makes the shrewd remark, that "it is no better than a mere compilation of isolated facts and circumstances, differently accounted for, and leading to no general theory:" such is not the philosophy of nature.