CHAPTER I.

THE FIRST LESSON.

My days are numbered; I am drawing near to the close of my earthly pilgrimage, and I must soon take my final departure,—whither, I dread to think. But before I go I would leave a brief record of some incidents in my worse than unprofitable life. A few who have known me, and will have the charity to breathe a prayer at my grave, may be glad to possess it; and others of my countrymen, who know not what to think of the marvellous phenomena daily and hourly exhibited in their midst, or are vainly striving to explain them on natural principles, may find it neither uninteresting nor uninstructive.

Of my exterior life I have not much to record, for though few have played a more active or important part in the great events of the past few years, my name has rarely been connected with them before the public. I was born in a small town in Western New York. My parents were honest agriculturists from Connecticut, and descended from ancestors who, with Hooker, founded the colony of Hartford. They were among the early settlers of what used to be called the “Holland Purchase,” and, till emigrating to the new world west of the Genesee, were rigid Puritans. Like most emigrants from the land of “steady habits,” they were intelligent, moral, industrious, and economical, and, as a matter of course, soon prospered in this world’s goods, and became able to give their only son the best education the State could furnish, and to leave him a competent estate. I made my preparatory studies at Batavia, and entered, at seventeen, the Freshman class of Union College, Schenectady. I remained at college four years, a diligent, if not a brilliant student, and graduated at the close with the highest standing, and the general love and esteem of my classmates.

My early predilection was for the mathematical and physical sciences. The moral and intellectual sciences were not much to my taste. I took no great interest in them. They struck me as vague, uncertain, and unprofitable. I preferred what M. Comte has since called _Positive Philosophy_. I soon mastered mathematics, mechanics, and physics, as far as they were taught in our college, but I found my greatest delight in chemistry, which, by its subtle analyses, seemed to promise me an approach to the vital principle and to the essences of things.

On leaving college I studied—not very profoundly—medicine, and took my degree, less with a view to professional practice, in which I never engaged, than with a view to general science. After taking my degree as Doctor of Medicine, I resumed and extended my college studies, entered largely into the study of natural history, physical geography, zoölogy, geology, mineralogy, and indeed all the ’ologies, then so fashionable that one must have a smattering of them if he would woo successfully his sweetheart. I paid some attention to Gall and Spurzheim’s new science of Phrenology, when Spurzheim visited this country, where he died, and was much interested in it till I had the misfortune to listen to a course of lectures in its exposition and defence, by George Combe, Esq., the great Scottish phrenologist. That course upset me, and I have since abandoned Phrenology, save so far as I find it taught by Plato in his Timæus, and only laughed at its pretensions and its adherents.

I was arrested, for a moment, by Boston Transcendentalism, but I could not make much of it. Its chiefs told me that I was not spiritual enough to appreciate it, and that I was too much under the despotism of the understanding to be able to rise to those empyrean regions where the soul asserts her freedom, and sports with infinite delight in all the luxury of the unintelligible. I thought they talked metaphysics, what neither their hearers nor themselves could understand; and finding myself very little enlightened by their intelligible unintelligibility, their dark utterances, and their Orphic sayings, I gave them up, and returned to my laboratory.

About 1836, I made the acquaintance of Dr. P——, or, as he claimed to be, the Marquis de P——, a native of one of the French West India Islands, but brought up and educated at Paris, where he had been a Saint-Simonian, and a chief of the _savans_ of the new religion. The decision of the French courts in 1833, that Saint-Simonism was not a religion, and therefore that its chiefs were not priests, and entitled to a salary from the state, dispersed the new sect, and he soon after came to the United States, and commenced, though with a very imperfect knowledge of our language, and very little facility in speaking it, a course of lectures in several of our eastern cities, on Mesmerism, or, as he preferred to call it, Animal Magnetism. His appearance was by no means prepossessing, and his manners, though unpretending, were very far from indicating that exquisite grace and polish which are supposed, for what reason I know not, to be peculiar to the Frenchman; but he was a serious, earnest-minded man, who in several branches of science had made solid studies. I knew him well, and esteemed him much.

At that time I had paid not much attention to Mesmerism. I had heard of Mesmer indeed, of his extraordinary pretensions, and the wonderful phenomena which he professed to produce by his rod and tub; but I had supposed that the matter had been put at rest for all sensible persons by the famous report of the French Academy in 1784, signed, among others, by Bailly the astronomer, and our own Franklin. I supposed that every scientific man acquiesced in the conclusion of that report, that the extraordinary phenomena exhibited by magnetism were to be ascribed to the imagination, and that from the date of that report magnetism had ceased to occupy the attention of the scientific. I was therefore surprised, nay, scandalized, to find a man of real science, and, as I wished to believe, of real worth, professing faith in what I had been led to regard as an exploded humbug, and which, at the very best, could have no practical utility beyond illustrating the deceptive power of the imagination, and the sad consequences which might result to those weak-minded people who become dupes to their own disordered fancy.

Dr. P—— assured me that I was mistaken both as to the bearing and as to the effect of the famous report of the French Academy. That report, he said, concedes the reality of the mesmeric phenomena, and only declares that the assertion of Mesmer, that they are produced by means of a subtle fluid analogous to electricity or magnetism, was not proven or demonstrated by the experiments the commission witnessed; which gives no uneasiness to any animal magnetist in our day, because now no one pretends to explain those phenomena by means of such a fluid. It is true, he said, the commission, in their published report, assert that the phenomena are to be explained by the imagination; but in a private report, addressed to the king, they say, that “it is impossible not to recognize in them a _great power_ which agitates and subjects the patients, and of which the magnetizer appears to be the depositary.” This, contended Dr. P——, is by no means compatible with the theory which ascribes them to the imagination, for that theory supposes the cause that produces them to be in the magnetized, since it is to their imagination, not to that of the magnetizer, that they are to be ascribed; but in this secret report, the power which produces them is assumed to be in the magnetizer, “of which,” it says, “he who magnetizes seems to be the depositary.” For these, as well as other reasons, he said, the report of the Academy was not regarded by magnetists as any authority against Animal Magnetism as understood and practised at the present time.

Moreover, he assured me, that the report of the Academy had not settled the question, or seriously checked the cultivation or the progress of Animal Magnetism. It had at no moment ceased to be studied and practised, chiefly for its therapeutic effects, and, as he proved to me, was at the time firmly held and practised by large numbers of the most upright, benevolent, learned, and scientific members of the medical profession in France, Germany, and Great Britain. It had continued to make progress, and was now very generally held and respected on the continent of Europe. If I would not be behind my age, if I would not remain ignorant of a very curious and interesting class of phenomena, I must, he insisted, investigate and make myself acquainted with Animal Magnetism. I should do it as a lover of science; I should do it more especially as a lover of my race, as a friend of humanity; for I might rest assured that Animal Magnetism is the most facile and powerful means ever yet discovered of solacing, and to a great extent curing, a thousand ills that flesh is heir to.

My curiosity, I confess, was excited, and I resolved to investigate the subject. Dr. P—— had picked up, somewhere in Rhode Island, a somnambulist, an honest, simple-minded young woman, of no great strength of intellect, and very little education or knowledge. She was sickly, and suffering from some nervous affection. He had found her very susceptible to the mesmeric influence, and he made her the subject of numerous experiments. He had brought her, in the winter of 1836-7, to Boston, and there exhibited her to his class. Spending that winter in the same city, I consented one afternoon to be present at his experiments. There were some twenty or thirty gentlemen present on the occasion, mostly lawyers, physicians, ministers, and literary and scientific gentlemen of distinction, all disbelievers in Mesmerism, and on the alert to detect the least sign of deception or complicity.

The Doctor introduced his patient, who took her seat in an arm-chair placed in the centre of the room, and, without any visible sign from Dr. P——, was in a few minutes apparently fast asleep. Her breathing was regular, her pulse natural, and her sleep sound and tranquil. Was it sleep? It was, as far as we could ascertain, and sleep accompanied by complete insensibility. We resorted to every imaginable contrivance to awaken her. One tickled her nose with a feather, another shook her with all his might, another discharged a pistol close to her ear, another stuck pins and needles into her flesh,—all without the least effect. There was no quivering or shrinking, no muscular contraction, and to the rudest proofs she was as insensible as a corpse. We all exhausted our inventive powers in vain, and stood astounded, unwilling to trust our own senses, and yet unable to detect the least conceivable deception or collusion. We none of us knew what to think or say. We were taken all aback.

Various written questions, after we had given over trying to awaken her, were handed to Dr. P——, which he put to her mentally, without a word or sign that we could any of us discern, and to which she instantly answered. One question was, the time of the day; she answered, and answered correctly, much more so than most gentlemen’s watches present. To every question put she answered, and so far as any of us knew, or could ascertain, with perfect accuracy. The Doctor at length told her he thought she had slept long enough, and would do well to wake up. Instantly she was wide awake, and apparently unconscious of all that had passed. She remained awake for some time, when Dr. P—— said to her, “I will you to go to sleep again for just fifteen minutes, and then to wake up.” Instantly she dropped asleep. One or two of the company took the Doctor into a different part of the room, got him into an angry discussion, and made him forget the order he had given. I stood by the somnambulist holding my watch in my hand, and to my astonishment, precisely at the expiration of fifteen minutes, she awoke. Various other experiments were tried, various severe tests were put;—some of them with complete success, others, indeed, proved total failures; and after a session of about three hours the party broke up and went to their several homes, some two or three converted, the greater part satisfied that there was and could be no collusion or deception, and yet wholly sceptical as to the alleged magnetic power.