When a boy or girl is taught by example to express a noble sentiment in a natural manner, he is thereby compelled to feel the sentiment in some degree with sincerity. When he is required to imitate and practice certain forms of politeness which express the best sentiments, those sentiments must gradually become a part of his nature. The acts of respect, of kindness and courtesy to which he may be naturally averse, cannot be daily practised without rousing in his nature the sentiments to which they correspond.
VALUE OF DANCING.
Among the many disciplinary methods which have been neglected in our educational systems, I would give a high rank to dancing. Rightly conducted, it embodies so much of grace, dignity, cheerfulness, playfulness, health, and the desire of pleasing, as to entitle it to a high rank in the promotion of health and virtue. Dancing is one of the imitative arts, and involves the amiable influence of imitation, as well as the more lively sentiments. The hostility of the orthodox churches to this refining exercise is probably the effect of the infernalism of their theology, which places mankind upon the brink of hell, in full view of the infinite agony of their friends, relatives, and ancestors, so as to render every sentiment but that of gloom and terror inappropriate. How bitter their hostility to all gaiety! “Yes, dance, young woman,” said a famous Methodist preacher about twenty years ago, “dance down to hell!” At the same time, his own private record did not indicate any deep sincerity in his fear of hell. The same hostility is still kept up, and overflows in the popular harangues of Rev. Sam Jones, and many others.
Popular Christianity, in the majority of the churches, is therefore one of the greatest hindrances to a normal educational system, and to social refinement, notwithstanding its support of some of the essential virtues.
THE REVOLUTIONARY METHOD.
The fourth method, of passive sympathy, is the most scientific, the most novel and the most powerful of all,—the most competent to grasp the helpless, hopeless, half idiotic, and half criminal classes and restore them to normal intelligence and virtue. It was not mentioned in the “New Education,” for fear of alarming the orthodox stolidity of the medical college and the church, but it will appear in future editions. It is the method of bringing the subject into absolute sympathy and absolute subordination under the operator.
It has been known throughout this century that certain persons can be brought under the control of those of stronger wills, so as to realize the thoughts, and even sensations of the operator, feeling what he feels, tasting what he tastes, apparently more familiar with his body than their own, and passively subject to his will. They are said to be en rapport with him, and with no one else. In this condition his will is substituted for their own, which is entirely passive, and he is able to fix impressions on their minds and produce changes in their feelings and sentiments which may remain after his control is removed.
It is self-evident that in this process we have the most powerful lever ever discovered for uplifting the fallen, and doing more in an hour than can be done by the usual methods in many months. Why, then, have we not had the benefit of this potent method throughout the century? The answer is one word, Stolidity! These proceedings, which are called magnetic, or named after Mesmer, mesmeric, have had to battle for recognition, for existence even, against the college and the church. The medical and clerical professions have been everywhere educated to deny, despise, and resist this species of science, and would, if they had the power, suppress it by law, their education having made them ignorant of its merits and ignorant of its deeply interesting literature. Prejudice and ignorance are inculcated as easily as science, and they are inculcated in all colleges.
But all who are acquainted with the history of animal magnetism during the present century know that it has nobly fulfilled its mission as a system of therapeutics, by alleviating or curing all forms of disease of both body and mind. That which cures bodily diseases and sometimes overcomes insanity has certainly power enough to modify the action of the brain; and if the large number of magnetic physicians who have been successfully occupied in conquering disease had been employed in modifying the action of the brain in the young, we might have had as satisfactory reports of their success, which neither the medical nor the clerical profession would have been so much moved by jealousy to oppose.
In the light of anthropology, however, it is not necessary to adhere to the old formulæ of the followers of Mesmer. The hypnotic or mesmeric state is simply a condition arising from the exercise and predominance of a faculty belonging to all human beings,—a faculty which may be evoked by other methods, or by the voluntary action of the subject, or by the spontaneous action of the brain, as in those who in sleep pass into the state of somnambulism, and go forth in the night, walking in dangerous places with perfect safety, but in an unconscious state.