which loses just as much movement as the first one receives. Here causality is in the highest degree intelligible. What notwithstanding still remains mysterious, is restricted to the possibility of the passage of movement--of a thing incorporeal--from one body to another.
The receptivity of bodies in this mode is so slight, that the effect to be produced has to pass over completely from its cause. The same holds good of all purely mechanical influences; and if they are not all just as instantaneously understood, it is either because they are hidden from us by accessory circumstances, or because we are confused by the complicated connection of many causes and effects.
In itself, mechanical causality is everywhere equally, that is, in the highest degree, comprehensible; because cause and effect do not differ here as to _quality_, and because where they differ as to _quantity_, as in the lever, mere Space and Time relations suffice to make the thing clear. But as soon as weights come also into play, a second mysterious element supervenes, _gravity_: and, where elastic bodies are concerned, _elasticity_ also.--Things change as soon as we begin to ascend in the scale of phenomena. Heat, considered as cause, and expansion, liquefaction, volatilization or crystallization, as effects, are not homogeneous; therefore their causal connection is not intelligible. The comprehensibility of causality has diminished: what a lower degree of heat caused to liquefy, a higher degree makes evaporate: that which crystallizes with less heat, melts when the heat is augmented. Warmth softens wax and hardens clay; light whitens wax and blackens chloride of silver. And, to go still further, when two salts are seen to decompose each other mutually and to form two new ones, elective affinity presents itself to us as an impenetrable mystery, and the properties of the two new bodies are not a combination of the properties of their separate elements. Nevertheless we are still able to follow the process and to indicate the elements out of which the new bodies are formed; we can even separate what has been united and restore the original quantities. Thus noticeable heterogeneousness and incommensurability between cause and effect have here made their appearance: causality has become more mysterious. And this becomes still more apparent when we compare the effects of electricity or of the Voltaic pile with their causes, _i.e._ with the friction of glass, or the piling and oxidation of the plates. Here all similarity between cause and effect at once vanishes; causality becomes shrouded in a thick veil, which men like Davy, Faraday and Ampère have strenuously endeavoured to lift. The only thing now discernible through that veil, are the laws ruling its mode of action, which may be brought into a schema such as + E - E, communication, distribution, shock, ignition, analysis, charging, isolation, discharging, electric current, &c. &c., to this schema we are able to reduce and even to direct the effect; but of the process itself we know nothing: that remains an _x_. Here therefore cause and effect are completely heterogeneous, their connection is unintelligible, and we see bodies show great susceptibility to causal influences, the nature of which remains a secret for us. Moreover in proportion as we mount higher in the scale, the effect seems to contain more, the cause less. When we reach organic Nature therefore, in which the phenomenon of life presents itself, this is the case in a far higher degree still. If, as is done in China, we fill a pit with decaying wood, cover it with leaves from the same tree as the wood, and pour a solution of sulphur repeatedly over it, an abundant crop of edible mushrooms will spring up. A world of rapidly moving _infusoria_ will arise from a little hay well watered.
What a difference lies here between effect and cause! How much more does the former seem to contain than the latter! When we compare the seed, sometimes centuries, nay even thousands of years old, with the tree, or the soil with the specifically and strikingly different juices of innumerable plants--some healthy, some poisonous, some again nutritious--which spring from the same earth, upon which the same sun shines and the same rain falls, all resemblance ceases, and with it all comprehensibility for us. For here causality already appears in increased potency: that is, as stimulus and as susceptibility for stimulus. The schema of cause and effect alone has remained; we know that this is cause, that effect; but we know nothing whatever of the nature and disposition of causality. Between cause and effect there is not only no qualitative resemblance, but no quantitative relation: the relatively greater importance of the effect as compared with its cause increases more and more; the effect of the stimulus too does not augment in proportion with the enhancement of that stimulus; in fact just the contrary often takes place. Finally, when we come to the sphere of beings which have knowledge, there is no longer any sort of resemblance or relation between the action performed and the object which, as representation, evokes it. Animals, however, as they are restricted to _perceptible_ representations, still need the _presence_ of the object acting as a motive, which action is then immediate and infallible (if we leave training, _i.e._ habit enforced by fear, out of the question). For animals are unable to carry about with them conceptions that might render them independent of present impressions, enable them to reflect, and qualify them for deliberate action. Man can do this. Therefore when at last we come to rational beings, the motive is even no longer a present, perceptible, actually existing, real thing, but a mere conception having its present existence only in the brain of the person who acts, but which is extracted from many multifarious perceptions, from the experience of former years, or has been handed down in words. Here the separation between cause and effect is so wide, the effect has grown so much stronger as compared with the cause, that the vulgar mind no longer perceives the existence of a cause at all, and the acts of the will appear to it to be unconditioned, causeless: that is to say, free. This is just why, when we reflect upon them from outside, the movements of our own body present themselves as if they took place without cause, or to speak more properly, by a miracle. Experience and reflection alone teach us that these movements, like all others, are only possible as the effects of causes, here called motives, and that, on this ascending scale, it is only as to material reality that the cause has failed to keep pace with the effect; whereas it has kept pace with it as to dynamical reality, energy.--At this degree of the scale therefore--the highest in Nature--causality has become less intelligible to us than ever. Nothing but the bare schema, taken in a quite general sense, now remains, and the ripest reflection is needed to recognise its applicability and the necessity that schema brings with it everywhere.
In the Grotto of Pausilippo, darkness continues to augment as we advance towards the interior; but when once we have passed the middle, day-light again appears at the other end and shows us the way; so also in this case: just at the point where the outwardly directed light of the understanding with its form of causality, gradually yielding to increasing darkness, had been reduced to a feeble, flickering glimmer, behold! we are met by a totally different light proceeding from quite another quarter, from our own inner self, through the chance circumstance, that we, the judges, happen here to be the very objects that are to be judged. The growing difficulty of the comprehension of the causal nexus, at first so clear, had now become so great for perception and for the understanding--the agent in it--that, in animal actions, the very existence of that nexus seemed almost doubtful and those actions appeared to be a sort of miracle.
But, just at this point, the observer receives from his own inner self the direct information that the agent in them is the will--that very will, which he knows better and more intimately than anything that external perception can ever supply. This knowledge alone must be the philosopher's key to an insight into the heart of all those processes in unconscious Nature, concerning which causal explanation--although, here, to be sure, more satisfactory than in the processes last considered, and the clearer, the farther those processes were removed from these--nevertheless had still left an unknown _x_, and could never quite illumine the inside of the process, even in a body propelled by impact or attracted by gravity. This _x_ had continued expanding till finally, on the highest degrees of the scale, it had wholly repelled causal explanation. But then, just when the power of causal explanation had been reduced to a minimum, that _x_ revealed itself as _the will_--reminding us of Mephistopheles when, yielding to Faust's learned exorcisms, he steps forth out of the huge grown poodle whose kernel he was. In consequence of the considerations I have here set forth at length, we can surely hardly avoid recognising _the identity of this x_, even on the lowest degrees of the scale, where it was but faintly perceptible; then higher up, where it extended its obscurity more and more; and finally on the highest degrees, where it cast a shadow upon all things--till, at the very top, it reveals itself to our consciousness in our own phenomenal being, as _the will_. The two primarily different sources of our knowledge, that is to say the inward and the outward source, have to be connected together at this point by reflection. It is quite exclusively out of this connection that our comprehension of Nature, and of our own selves arises; but then the inner side of Nature is disclosed to our intellect, which by itself alone can never reach further than to the mere outside; and the mystery which philosophy has so long tried to solve, lies open before us. For then indeed we clearly see what the Real and the Ideal (the thing in itself and the phenomenon) properly are; and this settles the principal question which has engaged the attention of philosophers since Descartes: that is to say, the question as to the relation between these two, whose complete diversity Kant had shown most thoroughly and with unexampled depth, yet whose absolute identity was immediately afterwards proclaimed by humbugs on the credit of intellectual intuition. But if we decline to avail ourselves of this insight, which is really the one strait gate to truth, we can never acquire comprehension of the intrinsic essence of Nature, to which absolutely no other road leads; for then indeed we fall into an irremovable error. Then, as I have already said, we maintain the view, that motion has two radically different primary principles with a solid partition-wall between them: _i.e._ movement by means of causes, and movement by means of the will. The first of these must then remain for ever incomprehensible as to its innermost essence, because, after all its explanations, there is still left that unknown _x_ which contains the more, the higher the object under consideration stands in the scale of beings; while the second, movement by the will, presents itself as entirely disconnected from the principle of causality; as without reason; as freedom in individual actions: in other words, as completely opposed to Nature and utterly unexplainable. On the other hand, if the above-mentioned union of our external and internal knowledge has once been accomplished at the point where both meet, we then recognise two identities in spite of all accidental differences. That is to say, we recognise the identity of causality with itself on every degree of the scale of beings, and the identity of the _x_, which at first was unknown (_i.e._ of physical forces and vital phenomena), with the will which is within us. We recognise, I say, firstly the essential identity of causality under the various forms it is forced to assume on the different degrees of the scale, as it may manifest itself, now as a mechanical, chemical, or physical cause, now as a stimulus, and again as a perceptible or an abstract motive: we know it to be one and the same, not only when a propelling body loses as much movement as it imparts by impact, but also when in the combats of thought against thought, the victorious one, as the more powerful motive, sets Man in motion, a motion which follows with no less necessity than that of the ball which is struck. Where we ourselves are the things set in motion, where therefore the kernel of the process is well and intimately known to us, instead of allowing ourselves to be dazzled and confused by this light and thereby losing sight of the causal connection as it lies before us everywhere else in the whole of Nature; instead of shutting out this insight for ever, we now apply the new knowledge we have acquired from within as a key to the knowledge of things outside us, and then we recognise the second identity, that of our will with the hitherto mysterious _x_ that remains over after all causal explanation as an insoluble residue. Consequently we then say: even in cases in which the effect is brought about by the most palpable cause, the mysterious _x_ in the process, the real innermost core of it, the true agent, the _in-itself_ of all phenomena--which, after all, is only given us as representation and according to the forms and laws of representation--is essentially one and the same with what is known to us immediately and intimately as _the will_ in the actions of our own body, which body is likewise given us as intuition and representation.--This is (say what you will) the basis of true philosophy, and if the present age does not see this, many following ages will. _Tempo è galant' uomo!_ (_se nessun altro_).--Thus, just as, on the one hand, the essence of causality, which appears most clearly only on the lowest degree of the objectification of the will, is recognised by us again at every ascending step, even at the highest; so also, on the other hand, is the essence of the will recognised by us at every descending step in that ladder, even at the lowest, although this knowledge is only immediately acquired at the very highest. The old error asserts, that where there is will, there is no causality; and that where there is causality, there is no will. But we say: everywhere where there is causality, there is will; and no will acts without causality. The _punctum controversiæ_ therefore, is, whether will and causality can and must subsist together in one and the same process at the same time. What makes the knowledge, that this is indeed the case, so difficult, is the circumstance, that we know causality and will in two fundamentally different ways: causality entirely from outside, quite indirectly, quite through the understanding; will entirely from inside, quite directly; and that accordingly the clearer the knowledge of the one in each given instance, the less clear is the knowledge of the other. Therefore we recognise the essence of the will least readily, where causality is most intelligible; and, where the will is most unmistakably evident, causality becomes so obscured, that the vulgar mind could venture to deny its existence altogether.--Now, as Kant has taught us, causality is nothing but the form of the understanding itself, knowable _à priori_: that is, the essence of _representation_, as such, which is one side of the world; the other side is _will_: which is the thing in itself. That relative increase and decrease of clearness in inverse proportion of causality and of the will, that mutual advancing and receding of both, depends consequently upon the fact, that the more a thing is given us as mere phenomenon, _i.e._ as representation, the more clearly does the _à priori_ form of representation, _i.e._ causality, manifest itself: this is the case in inanimate Nature; conversely, the more immediate our knowledge of the will, the more does the form of representation recede into the background: this is the case with ourselves. That is: the nearer one side of the world approaches to us, the more do we lose sight of the other.
LINGUISTIC.
All that I have to record under this head is an observation of my own, made within the last few years, which seems hitherto to have escaped notice. Yet, that it is worthy of consideration, is attested by Seneca's utterance:[273] _Mira in quibusdam rebus verborum proprietas est, et consuetudo sermonis antiqui quædam efficacissimis notis signat._ Lichtenberg too says: "If one thinks much oneself, one finds a good deal of wisdom deposited in language. It is hardly likely that we have laid it all there ourselves, but rather that a great deal of wisdom really lies there."
[273] Seneca, "Epist." 81.
In many, perhaps in all, languages, the action even of those bodies which are without intellect, nay of inanimate bodies, is expressed by the words _to will_, so that the existence of a will in these bodies is thus taken for granted; but they are never credited with a faculty for knowing, representing, perceiving or thinking: I know of no expression which conveys this.
Seneca, when speaking of lightning shot down from heaven, says:[274] "_In his, ignibus accidit, quod arboribus: quarum cacumina, si tenera sunt, ita deorsum trahi possunt, ut etiam terram attingant; sed quum permiseris, in locum suum exsilient. Itaque non est quod eum spectes cujusque rei habitum, qui illi non_ ex voluntate _est. Si ignem permittis ire quo velit, cœlum repetet._" In a more general sense Pliny says: _nec quærenda in ulla parte naturæ ratio, sed voluntas_.[275] Nor do we find Greek less fertile in instances.
Aristotle, when explaining gravity, says: μικρὸν μὲν μόριον τῆς γῆς, ἐὰν μετεωρισθὲν ἀφεθῇ, φέρεται, καὶ μένειν οὐκ ἐθέλει (_parva quædam terræ pars, si elevata dimittitur, neque vult manere_).[276] And: Δεῖ δὲ ἕκαστον λέγειν τοιοῦτον εἶναι, ὃ φύσει +βούλεται+ εἶναι, καὶ ὃ ὑπάρχει, ἀλλὰ μὴ ὃ βίᾳ καὶ παρὰ φύσιν (_unumquodque autem tale dicere oportet, quale naturâ suâ esse vult, et quod est; sed non id quod violentiâ et præter naturam est_).[277] Of great and more than merely linguistic importance is what Aristotle says in his "Ethica magna,"[278] where not only animals, but inanimate beings (fire striving upwards and earth downwards) are explicitly in question, and he asserts that they may be obliged to do something contrary to their nature or their will: παρὰ φύσιν τι, ἢ παρ' ἃ +βούλονται+ ποιεῖν,--and therefore rightly places παρ' ἃ βούλονται as a paraphrase of παρὰ φύσιν.--Anacreon, in his 29th Ode, εἰς Βάθυλλον, in ordering the portrait of his lady-love, says of her hair: Ἕλικας δ' ἐλευθέρους μοι πλοκάμων, ἄτακτα συνθείς, ἄφες, ὡς +θέλωσι+, κεῖσθαι (_capillorum cirros incomposite jungens, sine utut volunt jacere_).[279] In German, Bürger says: "_hinab_ will _der Bach, nicht hinan_" (the brook _will_ go downwards not upwards). In daily life we constantly hear: "the water boils, it _will_ run over,"--"the veut _pas brûler_."--"_la corde, une fois tordue_, veut _toujours se retordre_."--In English, the verb '_to will_' is even the auxiliary of the future of all the other verbs, thus expressing the notion, that there lies a will at the bottom of every action. In English moreover, the endeavours of all inanimate and unconscious things, are expressly designated by the word _want_, which denotes every sort of human desire or endeavour: "the water _wants_ to get out,"--"the steam _wants_ to find an issue."--In Italian too we have "vuol _piovere_;" "_quest' orologio non_ vuol _andare_."--The conception of willing is besides so deeply rooted in this last language, that it seems to indicate everything that is requisite or necessary: "_ci_ vuol _un [274] _Ibid._ "Quæst. nat." ii. 24.
[275] Plin. "Hist. nat." 37, 15.
[276] Aristot. "De Cœlo." ii. c. 13, "If a small particle of earth is lifted and let loose, it is carried away and will not rest."
[Tr.'s add.]
[277] _Ibid._ c. 14, "But each thing ought to be named as it wills to be and really is according to its nature, not as it is by force and contrary to its nature." [Tr.'s add.]
[279] "Let the freely curling locks fall unarranged as they _will_ A very striking instance of this is to be found even in Chinese--a language which differs fundamentally from all those belonging to the Sanskrit family--it is in the commentary to the Y-King,[280] accurately rendered by Peter Regis as follows: "_Yang, seu materia cœlestis_, vult _rursus esse in superiore loco; scilicet illius naturæ ratio ita fert, seu innata lex_."
The following passage from Liebig[281] has decidedly much more than a linguistic signification, for it expresses an intimate feeling and comprehension of the way in which a chemical process takes place.
"Aldehyd arises, which with the same _avidity_ as sulphurous acid, combines directly with oxygen to form acetic acid."--And again:[282] "Aldehyd, which absorbs oxygen from the air with _great avidity_." As Liebig uses this expression twice in speaking of the same phenomenon, it can hardly be by chance, but rather because it was the only adequate expression for the thing.[283] That most immediate stamp of our thoughts, language, shows us therefore, that every inward impulse must necessarily be conceived as volition; but it by no means ascribes knowledge to things as well. The agreement on this point between all languages, perhaps without a single exception, proves that here we have to do with no mere figure of speech, but that the verbal expression is determined by a deeply-rooted feeling of the inner nature of things.
[281] Liebig, "Die Chemie in ihrer Anwendung auf Agrikultur," p.
394.
[282] _Ibid._ "Die Chemie in Anwendung auf Physiologie."
[283] French chemists likewise say: "_Il est évident que les métaux ne sont pas tous également_ avides _d'oxygène_."..."_La difficulté de la réduction devait correspondre nécessairement à une_ avidité _fort grande du métal pour l'oxygène_."--(See Paul de Rémusat, "La Chimie à l'Exposition." "L'Aluminium," "Revue des Deux Vaninus ("De Amirandis Naturæ Arcanis," p. 170) had said: "_Argentum vivum etiam in aqua conglobatur, quemadmodum et in plumbi scobe etiam: at a scobe non refugit_ (this is directed against an opinion expressed by Cardanus) _imo ex ea quantum potest colligit: quod nequit (scil. colligere), ut censeo_, invitum _relinquit_: natura enim et sua appetit, et vorat." This is evidently more than a form of words. He here quite decidedly attributes a will to quicksilver. And thus it will invariably be found that where, in physical and chemical processes, there is a reference to elementary forces of Nature and to the primary qualities of bodies which cannot be further deduced, these are always expressed by words which belong to the will and its manifestations. [Add. to 3rd ed.]
ANIMAL MAGNETISM AND MAGIC.
In 1818, when my chief work first appeared, Animal Magnetism had only begun to struggle into existence. But, as to its explanation--although, to be sure, some light had been thrown upon the passive side of it, that is, upon what goes on within the patient, by the contrast between the cerebral and the ganglionic systems, to which Reil had drawn attention, having been taken for the principle of explanation--the active side, the agent proper by means of which the magnetiser evokes all these phenomena, was still completely shrouded in darkness. People groped about among all sorts of material principles of explanation, such as Mesmer's all-permeating ether, or the exhalations from the magnetiser's skin, assumed by Stieglitz to be the cause, &c. &c. At the utmost a nerve-spirit had been recognised and, after all, this was but a word for an unknown thing. The truth had scarcely begun to dawn upon a few persons, whom practice had more deeply initiated. But I was still far from hoping for any direct corroboration of my doctrine from Magnetism.
_Dies diem docet_ however, and the great teacher, experience, has since brought to light an important fact concerning this deep-reaching agent which, proceeding from the magnetiser, produces effects apparently so contrary to the regular course of Nature that the long lasting doubt as to their existence, the stiff-necked incredulity, the condemnation of a Committee of which Lavoisier and Franklin were members, in short, the whole opposition that Magnetism encountered both in its first and second period (with the sole exception of the coarse, unintelligent condemnation without inquiry, which till very lately, prevailed in England) is quite excusable. The fact I allude to is, that this agent is nothing but the _will_ of the magnetiser. To-day not a doubt exists on this point, I believe, among those who combine practice with insight; therefore I think it superfluous to quote the numerous assertions of magnetisers in corroboration of it.[284] Time has thus not only verified Puységur's watchword and that of the older French magnetisers: "_Veuillez et croyez!_" _i.e._ "Will with belief!" but this very watchword has even developed into a correct insight of the process itself.[285] From Kieser's "Tellurismus," still probably the most thorough and detailed text book of Animal Magnetism we have, it clearly results, that no act of Magnetism can take effect without the will; on the other hand the bare will, without any outward action, is able to produce every magnetic effect. Manipulation seems to be only a means of fixing, and so to say incorporating, the will and its direction. In this sense Kieser says: "Inasmuch as the human hand--being the organ by which Man's outward activity is most visibly expressed--is the efficient organ in magnetising, manipulation arises."
De Lausanne, a French magnetiser, pronounces himself with still greater precision on this point in the Fourth Book of his "Annales du Magnétisme Animal" (1814-1816), where he says: "_L'action du magnétisme dépend de la seule volonté, il est vrai; mais l'homme ayant une forme_ extérieure et sensible, _tout ce qui est à son usage, tout ce qui doit agir sur lui, doit nécéssairement en avoir une, et pour que la volonté agisse, il faut qu'elle employe un mode d'action._" As, according to my doctrine, the organism is but the mere phenomenon, the visibility, the objectivity of the will; nay, as it is properly speaking only the will itself, viewed as representation in the brain: so also does the outward act of manipulation coincide with the inward act of the will. But where magnetic effects are produced without manipulation, they take place as it were artificially, in a roundabout way, the imagination taking the place of the outer act and even occasionally that of personal presence: wherefore it is much more difficult and succeeds less frequently. Kieser accordingly alleges that the word "Sleep!" or "You must!" said aloud, has a more powerful effect upon a somnambulist than the mere inward willing of the magnetiser.--On the other hand manipulation, and in general outward action, is really an infallible means of fixing the magnetiser's will and promoting its activity; precisely because outward acts are quite impossible apart from all will, the body and its organs being nothing but the visibility of the will itself. This explains the fact, that magnetisers at times magnetise without any conscious effort of volition and almost without thinking, and yet produce the desired effect. On the whole, it is not the consciousness of volition, reflection upon it, that acts magnetically, but pure volition itself, as detached as possible from all representation. In Kieser's directions to magnetisers therefore,[286] we find all thinking and reflecting upon their respective doing and suffering, all conversation between them, forbidden both to physician and patient; also all outward impressions which arouse representations, the presence of strangers, and even daylight. He advises that everything should proceed as unconsciously as possible, as is likewise recommended in charm-cures. The true reason of all this is, that here the will operates in its primariness, as thing in itself; and this demands the exclusion, as far as possible, of representation, as a different sphere, as secondary to the will.
Facts to prove that the real agent in magnetising is the will and each outward act only its vehicle, may be found in all the more recent and more trustworthy writings upon Magnetism, and it would be needless prolixity to repeat them here. Nevertheless I will quote _one_ case, not as being especially striking, but as furnished by a remarkable person and having a peculiar interest as his testimony. Jean Paul says in a letter:[287] "Twice in a large company I have made Frau von K.
nearly go to sleep by merely looking at her with a _firm will_, no one else knowing anything about it, and before that, I had brought on palpitation of the heart and pallor to such a degree that Dr. S. had to be summoned to her assistance."[288] Nowadays too, merely laying and keeping hold of the patient's hands while fixing the eye steadily upon him, is frequently substituted with complete success for the customary manipulation; precisely because even this outward act is suited to fix the will in a determined direction. But this immediate power which the will can exercise over other persons, is brought to light best of all by the admirable experiments made, even in public, by M. Dupotet and his pupils in Paris, in which a stranger is guided and determined at pleasure by the magnetiser's mere will, aided by a few gestures, and is even forced into the most extraordinary contortions. An apparently quite honestly written pamphlet, entitled "First glance into the wonder-world of Magnetism," by Karl Scholl (1853), contains a brief account of this.
[284] I only mention _one_ work which has recently appeared, the explicit object of which is to show that the magnetiser's will is the real agent: "Qu'est ce que le Magnétisme?" par E. Gromier.
(Lyon, 1850.)
[285] Puységur himself says in the year 1784: "_Lorsque vous avez magnétisé le malade, votre but était de l'endormir, et vous y avez réussi par le seul acte de votre volonté; c'est de même par un autre acte de volonté que vous le réveillez._" (Puységur, "Magnét.
Anim." 2me édit. 1820, "Catéchisme Magnétique," p. 150-171.) [Add.
to 3rd ed.]
[287] See "Wahrheit aus Jean Paul's Leben," vol. viii. p. 120.
[288] I had the good fortune in the year 1854 myself to witness some extraordinary feats of this kind, performed here by Signor Regazzoni from Bergamo, in which the immediate, _i.e._ magical, power of his will over other persons was unmistakeable, and of which no one, excepting perhaps those to whom Nature has denied all capacity for apprehending pathological conditions, could doubt the genuineness. There are nevertheless such persons: they ought to become lawyers, clergymen, merchants or soldiers, but in heaven's name not doctors; for the result would be homicidal, diagnosis being the principal thing in medicine.--Regazzoni was able at will to throw the somnambulist who was under his influence into a state of complete catalepsy, nay, he could make her fall down backwards, when he stood behind her and she was walking before him, by his mere will, without any gestures. He could paralyze her, give her _tetanos_, with the dilated pupils, the complete insensibility, and in short, all the unmistakeable symptoms of complete catalepsy. He made one of the lady spectators first play the piano; then standing fifteen paces behind her, he so completely paralyzed her by his will and gestures, that she was unable to continue playing. He next placed her against a column and charmed her to the spot, so that she was unable to move in spite of the strongest efforts.--_According to my own observation_, nearly all his feats are to be explained by his _isolating the brain from the spinal marrow_, either completely, in which case the sensible and motor nerves become paralyzed, and total catalepsy ensues; or partially, by the paralysis only affecting the _motor_ nerves while sensibility remains--in other words, the head keeps its consciousness, while the body is apparently lifeless. This is precisely the effect of strychnine: it paralyzes the motor nerves only, even to complete _tetanos_, which induces death by _asphyxia_; but it leaves the sensible nerves, and with them consciousness, intact. Regazzoni does this same thing by the magic influence of his will. The moment at which this isolation takes place is distinctly visible in a peculiar trembling of the patient. I recommend a small French publication entitled "Antoine Regazzoni de Bergame à Francfort sur Mein," by L. A. V. Dubourg (Frankfurt, Nov. 1854, 31 pages in 8vo.) on Regazzoni's feats and the unmistakeably genuine character they bear for everyone who is not entirely devoid of all sense for organic Nature.
In the "Journal du Magnétisme," edit. Dupotet, of the 15th August, 1856, in criticizing a treatise: "De la Catalepsie, mémoire couronné," 1856, in 4to, the reviewer, Morin, says: "La plupart des caractères qui distinguent la catalepsie, peuvent être obtenus artificiellement et sans danger sur les sujets magnétiques, et c'est même là une des expériences les plus ordinaires des séances magnétiques." [Add. to 3rd ed.]
In the "Communications concerning the somnambulist, Auguste K. in Dresden" (1843), we find the truth in question confirmed in another way by what the somnambulist herself says, p. 53: "I was half asleep and my brother wished to play a piece he knew. As I did not like it, I requested him not to play it; nevertheless he tried to do so and then, by means of my firm will that he should not, I succeeded in making him unable to remember the piece, in spite of all his endeavours."--The thing is however brought to a climax when this immediate power of the will is extended even to inanimate bodies. However incredible this may appear, we have nevertheless two accounts of it coming from entirely different quarters. In the book just mentioned,[289] it is related and testified by witnesses, that Auguste K. caused the needle of the compass to deviate at one time 7° and at another 4°, this experiment moreover being repeated four times. She did this moreover without any use of her hands, through her mere will, by looking steadily at it.--The Parisian somnambulist, Prudence Bernard, again in a public _séance_ in London, at which Mr. Brewster, the physicist's son and two other gentlemen from among the spectators acted as jurors, made the