It would require a volume to relate the wonders of artificial somnambulism produced by Animal Magnetism, i. e. the somnolency produced in certain organizations by persons constitutionally endowed for the purpose; during which, some patients become so utterly insensible, that surgical operations of the most painful nature, such as amputation, have been performed upon them without their knowledge. Others appear to be transported into a higher sphere; and in a frame of mind described under the name of clairvoyance, become capable of reading sealed letters and closed books; of speaking languages of which they are otherwise ignorant, and indicating the name and nature of misunderstood diseases, as well as the means of cure; though at the cessation of the state of somnambulism, all recollection is effaced of the wonders they have performed under its influence.
The mysteries of Magnetic Science are at present so imperfectly understood, and afford so wide a field for scientific argument, that it would be presumptuous to enter further into the subject in a work affecting to treat of errors and superstitions.
CHAPTER XLIX.
A FEW MORE WORDS ABOUT GHOSTS, VAMPIRES, AND LOUP-GAROUX.
In the winter of 1758, the sacristan of Polliac expired, after a few hours’ illness, of a fright produced by the sight of a large white rabbit seated on the grave-stone of a famous poacher recently deceased, as he was crossing the church-yard at midnight after accompanying the curate to administer the last sacrament to a dying parishioner. The mind of this poor fellow, who was a proficient in the ghost stories of the neighbourhood, was probably deeply impressed by the melancholy scene he had been witnessing; which, combined with the desperate character and blasphemous habits of Blaise Rolland, the poacher, induced him to suppose that the soul of the defunct had undergone transformation, or that Satan himself was watching over his grave, in the shape of one of the animals he had so often appropriated to himself.
The rabbit proved in the sequel to be a tame one escaped from a neighbouring farm. But in the interim, the poor man had fallen a victim to his panic! A more rational being would have inquired of himself for what purpose the Almighty could be supposed to suffer the soul of an obscure poacher to revisit the earth, when we learn from divine writ His refusal to permit the appearance of Dives to his brethren, as a superfluous concession. “If they hear not Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead!”
Nothing can be more absurd than the functions attributed to ghosts, when we know that the soul, at the moment of its separation from the body, is an impalpable, invisible, substance. Yet this spiritual essence, which eye hath not seen, or ear heard, is supposed to have exercised the power of dragging chains, undrawing curtains, opening doors, ringing bells, uttering groans, articulating reproaches; in the face of the Scriptural Revelation “that the body shall return to the dust, and the spirit unto God who gave it!”
We find in St. John’s Gospel, that the souls of mankind in the different mansions of the Almighty, receive after death the reward of deeds done in the body. Is it likely then that they should have leisure or inclination for revisiting their dreary mansion of clay?