CHAPTER VI.

TABLE TURNING.

The point to which I at first directed my attention was to ascertain the power, which, by means of mesmerism, I might acquire over the elemental forces of nature. I found that with or without actual contact I could at will paralyze the whole body of another, subject it in great measure to my own will, and force it to obey my bidding. I could render it preternaturally weak and preternaturally strong. I found also that I could produce all these effects at a distance, by means of magnetized inanimate objects. For instance, I would magnetize a bunch of flowers, and a person knowing nothing of what I had done, who should take them up and smell of them, would exhibit all the usual phenomena of the mesmerized. Here it was evident that the mesmeric power, whatever it might be, could act directly on matter, and lodge itself in a material object. It was clear then that the mesmeric phenomena had a real objective cause, and therefore could not be the effects either of imagination or hallucination. Here was a most striking and important fact, and one which entirely refuted the ultra spiritualism of the majority of mesmerizers.

My experiments in clairvoyance and second sight were equally surprising in their results. The theory of those who conceded the facts was, that in some inexplicable way, the somnambulist uses the brain of him with whom he or she is _en rapport_, and therefore is restricted in the clairvoyant power to the images already in that brain. I mesmerize, say a young woman. In her mesmeric state she becomes clairvoyant. She can see with my organs of vision whatever I myself can see, or have seen, but nothing else. She can tell my most secret thoughts and intentions, or those of any one with whom she is _en rapport_, but nothing more. She can answer correctly any question the answer to which is known to the interrogator, but not questions the answer to which is unknown to him. But repeated and well-attested experiments prove to the contrary. Nothing is more common than for her to answer correctly questions equally unknown to herself and to those with whom she is placed in communication, and in cases where it is certain the answer could not be known by any human means to either. The magnetic power was, then, clearly a medium of knowledge distinct from the brain or mind of the magnetizer, or individual with whom the magnetized is _en rapport_.

What tends to confirm this is the surprising fact that persons mesmerized by a mesmerized glass of water, or bunch of flowers, manifest equally a superhuman knowledge. I passed one day by a boarding-school, and threw over the wall, unseen myself, a bunch of flowers which I had mesmerized. One of the young ladies saw it, picked it up, smelled it, and placed it in her bosom. Almost instantly she became strangely affected, seemed bewitched, acted as one possessed. But what it is important to note is, that she saw and described, as was clearly proved, things with perfect accuracy, which none of the inmates of the school, and neither she nor I, had any human means of knowing. She had learned no language but English, and yet could understand and answer readily in any language in which she was questioned, could and did foretell events, with all the particulars of time and place when they would happen. Moreover, the poor girl herself complained of feeling herself under a foreign power, and one which made her say and do things to which she felt, even at the moment, the greatest repugnance. It was clear, then, that the mesmeric power was not a mere blind force, but acted from intelligence and will, and an intelligence and will foreign to mine, for how could I lodge my intelligence and will in a bunch of flowers, and render them there more powerful than in myself? Clearly the force was not exclusively material, unless matter can be endowed with intelligence and will.

I was somewhat puzzled, it is true, but I was resolved to continue my experiments, and wrest from nature, if possible her last secret. I soon found that it was not necessary to operate with others; that I had the clairvoyant power myself. With a slight effort I could throw myself into the mesmeric state. As soon as I found myself in this state I seemed no longer master of myself. I suffered in entering into it, and on coming out of it, convulsions more or less violent. While in it, I felt oppressed at the pit of my stomach, and my organs of speech seemed to be used by another. When I spoke, it was clear to me that I heard a voice at the pit of my stomach, speaking the words, and I was perfectly conscious of struggling not to say things which, nevertheless, were uttered by my organs. If in this state I sat down to write, my arm and pen seemed seized upon by a foreign power, and moved and guided without any agency of mine. What I wrote I knew not, and had never had in my mind till it came off the end of my pen, and I read it as written down. Evidently the power was distinct from me, and operated by a will not my own.

But I was not at all pleased to find myself subject even momentarily to a foreign power. I did not choose to let another use my organs, and to suffer my own will to lie in abeyance. The question arose, whether the same power could not be made to operate without using my organs. If I could mesmerize a material object, and by that mesmerize persons, why might I not mesmerize by it other material objects, and make them serve as organs to this power? I tried the experiment. I mesmerized a bunch of flowers and laid them on a table in my room, with the will that they should communicate to the table their mesmeric virtue. Immediately the table began to move, and to dance round the room, to raise itself from the floor, to balance itself on two legs, then on one leg, to come to me or remove from me as I willed. I was delighted. I found the force could be communicated to the table. I wished to ascertain whether this power was intelligent or not. I required the table, if it could understand me, to give two raps with one of its feet. Immediately it did so. Then I required it, by the same sign, to tell me, whether it understood me by virtue of the mesmeric force. It gave the sign. Then I requested it to tell me, in the same way, whether this mesmeric force is one of the forces of nature, like electricity or magnetism, or whether it is a spirit. There was no answer. Is it, I asked, a spirit? No answer. If not a spirit, let the table, I said, strike with one foot. No movement. I went to the table, and found it, as it were, nailed to the floor. I could not move it. I am a strong man, of far more than ordinary physical strength, and was then in its full possession. The table was a light card-table, but with all my strength, repeatedly put forth, I could not so much as raise one end of it. This was extraordinary. I sat down on the sofa at a little distance. Immediately I began to hear slight raps, apparently under the table. Very soon they became louder, and seemed to be sometimes on the table, and sometimes under it; sometimes they seemed to come from a corner of the room, and sometimes from under the floor. I knew not what to make of them, but I felt no alarm, and remained calm and undisturbed, in the full possession of all my faculties. In some six or eight minutes they ceased, and then I saw the bunch of flowers which still lay on the table, taken up without visible agency, and carried and placed in a porcelain vase on the mantle shelf. I was sure I was surrounded by invisible and mysterious agencies, but I began to apprehend that I was in the condition of the Magician’s apprentice, sung by Goethe, who had overheard the word by which the master evoked the spirits, but had forgotten or had not learned that by which he dismissed them. I however retained my equanimity, and felt that I had gained at least something.

The next day I tried my experiments anew. This time I merely mesmerized the table. It soon began to move, raising itself about six inches from the floor, and whirling round like a dancing dervish. It seemed animated by a capricious or rather a mocking spirit, and it was some time before I could make it behave with a little sobriety. But I had spent the greater part of the night in consulting an old work on magic, which some years before I picked up on one of the Quais of Paris. It was written chiefly in characters and hieroglyphics, which at first I could not decipher; but at length I stumbled upon what I found to be a key to their meaning, and which was scarcely any meaning at all. However, I obtained one or two significant hints, and I went armed with a new power. I held a long dialogue with the table, which, however, I shall not record. I ascertained the origin of the raps, how to produce them, and how to read them. But this was but a trifle. I would have the power visible to my eyes, submissive to my orders, and speak to me in plain and intelligible language, properly so called. I obtained a promise that this should come in due time, but that for the present I must suffer the force to remain invisible, and be content with a language of mere arbitrary signs.

I was informed that I was on the eve of gratifying my most secret and ardent wish, and that I should have, in full measure, the knowledge and power I craved. But I was not yet prepared, inasmuch as I craved them for an irreligious end. I was moved by no noble motive. I was moved by curiosity, and the love of power, for my own sake, not from love and sympathy with mankind. I was not in harmony with the great principles of nature, and did not seek the real end of the universe. I needed purification, a sublimation of my affections, and an elevation of my aims. I had devoted myself to the physical sciences, which was all very well, but I had neglected moral science, which was not well. I had only partially imbibed the spirit of the age, and took no part in the great movements of the day; felt no interest in the great questions of social amelioration and progress. I had no sympathy with the poorest and most numerous class, and made no efforts to emancipate the slave, or to elevate woman to her proper sphere in social and political life. I did not properly love my race, and had no due appreciation of humanity. I had great talents, great abilities, and might, if I would, make myself the Messiah of the nineteenth century.

But what had I done? What good cause could boast of having had me for its friend and advocate? Had I aided the Moral Reform Association? Had I raised my voice in behalf of the Abolitionists? Had Owen or Fourier found me a coadjutor in time of need? Had I risked my popularity in defending new and unpopular sects, those prophets of the future? Or had I given my sympathy to those noble spirits everywhere moving society, and risking their lives to overthrow the tyranny of church and state, to conquer liberty, and to raise up the down-trodden millions of mankind? No, no; I had done nothing of all this. I might have been kind and useful to this or that individual, and sympathized with suffering when immediately under my eyes, and removable or mitigable by my individual effort; but I had not sympathized with humanity, and labored to relieve the poor and destitute, to enlighten the ignorant and superstitious of remote and neglected regions. The age is philanthropic, and love is the great miracle-worker of our times. In love you place yourself in harmony with the source of all things, make yourself one with God, and possessor of his omnipotence. Learn to love, associate yourself heart and soul with the movement party of the times, and you will soon render yourself capable of receiving an answer to your questions and your wishes.

It must not be supposed that all this was told me at once, or in plain, direct terms. It was told me only a little at a time, and in a very indirect and cumbersome mode of communication. It required several weeks daily communing with my mesmerized table, and in spelling out the raps with which I was favored. But though it reproved me, I was still delighted. The power was good, and this accorded with my previous conviction. I regarded the power which, by mesmerism, was brought into play, as one of the primordial laws or elemental forces of nature, and as nature was good, as it worked always to a good end, of course I could hope to avail myself of it only in proportion as I myself became good and devoted to the end to which nature herself works. God will work with and for us, only as we work with and for him; that is, for the end for which he himself works. As to the intelligence apparently possessed by this force, that was in harmony with what of philosophy I had. Is not God infinite, universal intelligence? and is he not the original and similitude of the universe? What, then, is the universe itself but an emanation of infinite and universal intelligence. All creatures participate their creator, for they are nothing without him, and therefore all that exists must participate intelligence, or be a participated intelligence, and, of course, the higher the order of existence, the greater and more comprehensive its intelligence. All nature bears evidence that its laws are the laws of reason, and that its primitive forces are intelligent forces. How, then, should this force not be intelligent, and if intelligent, far more intelligent than I?

I resolved to prepare for placing myself in immediate relation with infinite power and intelligence. I thought I caught a glimpse of a deeper significance in the words, “ye shall be as gods,” than had been generally suspected, and I began to think in real earnest that my sweet lady friend in Philadelphia, who had so eloquently and lovingly defended Eve in eating the forbidden fruit, was quite right, and that her disobedience was really a brave and heroic act. Man could really become as a god, but the priests had invented the prohibition to prevent him. The god of the priests, then, could not be the true God, and Satan, instead of being regarded as the enemy, should be, as the author of _Festus_ seems to teach, loved and honored as the friend of man. A new light seemed to break in at once upon my mind. The world had hitherto worshipped a false god; it had called evil good, and good evil; it had enshrined in its temples the enemy of man, and chained to the Caucasian rock that god Prometheus, who was the true and noble friend and benefactor of the race.