Chapter V: Part 5

In 1775, Bailly sent the first volume of his history to Voltaire. In thanking him for his present, the illustrious old man addressed to the author one of those letters that he alone could write, in which flattering and enlivening sentences were combined without effort with high reasoning powers. "I have many thanks to return you, (said the Patriarch of Ferney,) for having on the same day received a large book on medicine and yours, while I was still ill; I have not opened the first, I have already read the second almost entirely, and feel better."

Voltaire, indeed, had read Bailly's work pen in hand, and he proposed to the illustrious astronomer some queries, which proved both his infinite perspicacity, and wonderful variety of knowledge. Bailly then felt the necessity of developing some ideas which in his _History of Ancient Astronomy_ were only accessories to his principal subject. This was the object of the volume that he published in 1776, under the title of _Letters on the Origin of the Sciences and of the People of Asia, addressed to M. de Voltaire_. The author modestly announced that "to lead the reader by the interest of the style to the interest of the question discussed," he would place at the head of his work three letters from the author of _Merope_, and he protested against the idea that he had been induced to play with paradoxes.

According to Bailly, the present nations of Asia are heirs of an anterior people, who understood Astronomy perfectly. Those Chinese, those Hindoos, so renowned for their learning, would thus have been mere depositaries; we should have to deprive them of the title of inventors. Certain astronomical facts, found in the annals of those southern nations, appear to have belonged to a higher latitude. By these means we discover the true site on the globe of the primitive people, proving against the received opinion that learning came southward from the north.

Bailly also found that the ancient fables, considered physically, appeared to belong to the northern regions of the earth.

In 1779, Bailly published a second collection, forming a sequel to the former, and entitled _Letters on the Atlantis of Plato, and on the Ancient History of Asia_.

Voltaire died before these new letters could be communicated to him. Bailly did not think that this circumstance ought to make him change the form of the discussion already employed in the former series; it is still Voltaire whom he addresses.

The philosopher of Ferney thought it strange that there should be no knowledge of this ancient people, who, according to Bailly, had instructed the Indians. To answer this difficulty, the celebrated astronomer undertakes to prove that some nations have disappeared, without their existence being known to us by any thing beyond tradition. He cites five of these, and in the first rank the Atlantidæ.

Aristotle said that he thought Atlantis was a fiction of Plato's: "He who created it also destroyed it, like the walls that Homer built on the shores of Troy, and then made them disappear." Bailly does not join in this skepticism. According to him, Plato spoke seriously to the Athenians of a learned, polished people, but destroyed and forgotten. Only, he totally repudiates the idea of the Canaries being the remains of the ancient country of the Atlantidæ, and now engulfed. Bailly rather places that nation at Spitzbergen, Greenland, or Nova Zembla, whose climate may have changed. We should also have to seek for the Garden of the Hesperides near the Pole; in short, the fable of the Phoenix may have arisen in the Gulf of the Obi, in a region where we must suppose the sun to have been annually absent during sixty-five days.

It is evident, in many passages, that Bailly is himself surprised at the singularity of his own conclusions, and fears that his readers may rather regard them as jokes. He therefore exclaims, "My pen would not find expressions for thoughts which I did not believe to be true." Let us add that no effort is painful to him. Bailly calls successively to his aid astronomy, history, supported by vast erudition, philology, the systems of Mairan, of Buffon, relatively to the heat appertaining to the earth. He does not forget, using his own words, "that in the human species, still more sensitive than curious, more anxious for pleasure than for instruction, nothing pleases generally, or for a long time, unless the style is agreeable; that dry truth is killed by ennui!" Yet Bailly makes few proselytes; and a species of instinct determines men of science to despise the fruits of so persevering a labour; and D'Alembert goes so far as to tax them with poverty, even with hollow ideas, with vain and ridiculous efforts; he goes so far as to call Bailly, relatively to his letters, the _illuminated brother_. Voltaire is, on the contrary, very polite and very academical in his communications with our author. The renown of the Brahmins is dear to him; yet this does not prevent his discussing closely the proofs, the arguments of the ingenious astronomer. We could also now enter into a serious discussion. The mysterious veil that in Bailly's time covered the East, is in great part raised. We now know the Astronomy of the Chinese and the Hindoos in all its detail. We know up to what point the latter had carried their mathematical knowledge. The theory of central heat has in a few years made an unhoped-for progress; in short, comparative philology, prodigiously extended by the invaluable labours of Sacy, Rémusat, Quatremère, Burnouf, and Stanislaus Julien, have thrown strong lights on some historical and geographical questions, where there reigned before a profound darkness. Armed with all these new means of investigation, it might easily be established that the systems relative to an ancient unknown people, first creator of all the sciences, and relative to the Atlantidæ, rest on foundations devoid of solidity. Yet, if Bailly still lived, we should be only just in saying to him, as Voltaire did, merely changing the tense of a verb, "Your two books _were_, Sir, treasures of the most profound erudition and the most ingenious conjectures, adorned with an eloquence of style, which is always suitable to the subject."

FIRST INTERVIEW OF BAILLY WITH FRANKLIN.--HIS ENTRANCE INTO THE FRENCH ACADEMY IN 1783.--HIS RECEPTION.--DISCOURSE.--HIS RUPTURE WITH BUFFON.

Bailly became the particular and intimate friend of Franklin at the end of 1777. The personal acquaintance of these two distinguished men began in the strangest manner.

One of the most illustrious members of the Institute, Volney, on returning from the New World, said: "The Anglo-Americans tax the French with lightness, with indiscretion, with chattering." (Volney, preface to _The Table of the Climate of the United States_.) Such is the impression, in my opinion very erroneous, at least by comparison, under which the Ambassador Franklin arrived in France. All the world knows that he halted at Chaillot. As an inhabitant of the Commune, Bailly thought it his duty to visit without delay the illustrious guest thus received. He was announced, and Franklin, knowing him by reputation, welcomed him very cordially, and exchanged with his visitor the eight or ten words usual on such occasions. Bailly seated himself by the American philosopher, and discreetly awaited some question to be put to him. Half an hour passed, and Franklin had not opened his mouth. Bailly drew out his snuff-box, and presented it to his neighbour without a word; the traveller signed with his hand that he did not take snuff. The dumb interview was then prolonged during a whole hour. Bailly finally rose. Then Franklin, as if delighted to have found a Frenchman who could remain silent, extended his hand to him, pressed his visitor's affectionately, exclaiming: "Very well, Monsr. Bailly, very well!"

After having recounted the anecdote as our academician used amusingly to relate it, I really fear being asked how I look upon it. Well, Gentlemen, whenever this question may be put to me, I shall answer that Bailly and Franklin discussing together some scientific question from the moment of their meeting, would have appeared to me much more worthy of each other, than the two actors of the scene at Chaillot. I will, moreover, grant that we may draw the following inference,--that even men of genius are liable to cross humours; but I must at the same time add that the example is not dangerous, dumbness not being an efficacious method of making one's self valued, or of distinguishing ourselves to advantage.

Bailly was nominated member of the French Academy in the place of M. de Tressan, in November, 1783. The same day, M. de Choiseul Gouffier succeeded to D'Alembert. Thanks to the coincidence of the two nominations, Bailly escaped the sarcasms which the expectant academicians never fail to pour out, with or without reason, against those who have obtained a double crown. This time they vented their spleen exclusively on the great man, thus enabling the astronomer to take possession of his new dignity without raising the usual storm. Let us carefully collect, Gentlemen, from the early years of our academician's life, all that may appear an anticipated compensation for the cruel trials that we shall have to relate in the sequel.

The admission of the eloquent author of the _History of Astronomy_ into the Academy, was more difficult than could be supposed by those who have remarked to what slight works certain early and recent writers have owed the same favour. Bailly failed three times. Fontenelle had before him unsuccessfully presented himself once oftener; but Fontenelle underwent these successive checks without ill-humour, and without being discouraged. Bailly, on the contrary, with or without reason, seeing in these unfavourable results of the elections the immediate effect of D'Alembert's enmity, showed himself much more hurt at it, perhaps, than was suitable for a philosopher. In these somewhat envenomed contests, Buffon always gave Bailly a cordial and able support.

Bailly pronounced his reception-discourse in February, 1784. The merits of M. de Tressan were therein celebrated with grace and delicacy. The panegyrist identified himself with his subject. A select public loaded with praises various passages wherein just and profound ideas were clothed in all the richness of a forcible and harmonious style.

Did any one ever speak with more eloquence of the scientific power revealed by a contemporary discovery! Listen, Gentlemen, and judge.

"That which the sciences can add to the privileges of the human race has never been more marked than at the present moment. They have acquired new domains for man. The air seems to become as accessible to him as the waters, and the boldness of his enterprises equals almost the boldness of his thoughts. The name of Montgolfier, the names of those hardy navigators of the new element, will live through time; but who among us, on seeing these superb experiments, has not felt his soul elevated, his ideas expanded, his mind enlarged?"

I know not whether, all things considered, the satisfaction of self-love which may be attached to academical titles, to his success in public and important meetings, ever completely rewarded Bailly for the heartaches he experienced in his literary career.

A kind and tender intimacy had grown up between the great naturalist Buffon and the celebrated astronomer. An academical nomination broke it up. You know it, Gentlemen; amongst us a nomination is the apple of discord; notwithstanding the most opposite views, every one then thinks that he is acting for the true interest of science or of letters; every one thinks that he is proceeding in the line of strict justice; every one endeavours earnestly to make proselytes. So far all is legitimate. But what is much less so, is forgetting that a vote is a decision, and that in this sense the academician, like the magistrate, may say to the suitor, whether an academician or not, "I give decrees, and not services."

Unfortunately, considerations of this sort, notwithstanding their justice, would make but little impression on the haughty and positive mind of Buffon. That great naturalist wished to have the Abbé Maury nominated; his associate Bailly thought he ought to vote for Sedaine. Let us place ourselves in the ordinary course of things, and it will appear difficult to see in this discordancy a sufficient cause for a rupture between two superior men. _The Unforeseen Wager_ and _The Unconscious Philosopher_, considerably balanced the, then very light, weight of Maury. The comic poet had already reached his sixty-sixth year; the Abbé was young. The high character, the irreproachable conduct of Sedaine, might, without disparagement, be put in comparison with what the public knew of the character of the official and the private life of the future cardinal. Whence then had the illustrious naturalist derived such a great affection for Maury, such violent antipathies against Sedaine? It may be surmised that they arose from aristocratic prejudices of rank. Nor is it impossible but that M. le Comte de Buffon instinctively foresaw, with some repugnance, his approaching confraternity with a man formerly a lapidary; but was not Maury the son of a shoemaker? This very small incident of our literary history seemed doomed to remain in obscurity; chance has, I believe, given me the key to it.

You remember, Gentlemen, that aphorism continually quoted by Buffon, and of which he seemed very proud,--

"Style makes the man."

I have discovered that Sedaine made a counterpart of it. The author of _Richard Coeur de Lion_ and of _The Deserter_ said,--

"Style is nothing, or next to it!"

Place this heresy, in imagination, under the eyes of the immortal writer, whose days and nights were passed in polishing his style, and if you then ask me why he detested Sedaine, I shall have a right to answer: You do not know the human heart.

Bailly firmly resisted the imperious solicitations of his former patron, and refused even to absent himself from the Academy on the day of the nomination. He did not hesitate to sacrifice the attractions and advantages of an illustrious friendship to the performance of a duty; he answered to him who wanted to be master, "I will be free." Honour be to him!

The example of Bailly warns timid men never to listen to mere entreaties, whatever may be their source; not to yield but to good arguments. Those who have thought so little of their own tranquillity as to do any more in academical elections than to give a silent and secret vote, will see on their part, in the noble and painful resistance of an honest man, how culpable they become in trying to substitute authority for persuasion, in wishing to subject conscience to gratitude.

On the occurrence of a similar discord, the astronomer Lemonnier, of the Academy of Sciences, said one day to Lalande, his fellow-academician and former pupil, "I enjoin you not to put your foot again within my door during the semi-revolution of the lunar orbital nodes." Calculation shows this to be nine years. Lalande submitted to the punishment with a truly astronomical punctuality; but the public, despite the scientific form of the sentence, thought it excessively severe. What then will be said of that which was pronounced by Buffon?--"We will never see each other more, Sir!" These words will appear at once both harsh and solemn, for they were occasioned by a difference of opinion on the comparative merits of Sedaine and the Abbé Maury. Our friend resigned himself to this separation, nor ever allowed his just resentment to be perceived. I may even remark, that after this brutal disruption he showed himself more attentive than ever to seize opportunities of paying a legitimate homage to the talents and eloquence of the French Pliny.

REPORT ON ANIMAL MAGNETISM.

We are now going to see the astronomer, the savant, the man of letters, struggling against passions of every kind, excited by the famous question of animal magnetism.

At the beginning of the year 1778, a German doctor established himself at Paris. This physician could not fail of succeeding in what was then styled high society. He was a stranger. His government had expelled him; acts of the greatest effrontery and unexampled charlatanism were imputed to him.

His success, however, exceeded all expectations. The Gluckists and the Piccinists themselves forgot their differences, to occupy themselves exclusively with the new comer.

Mesmer, since we must call him by his name, pretended to have discovered an agent till then totally unknown both in the arts and in physics; an universally distributed fluid, and serving thus as a means of communication and of influence among the celestial globes;--a fluid capable of flux and reflux, which introduced itself more or less abundantly into the substance of the nerves, and acted on them in a useful manner,--thence the name of animal magnetism given to this fluid.

Mesmer said: "Animal magnetism may be accumulated, concentrated, transported, without the aid of any intermediate body. It is reflected like light; musical sounds propagate and augment it."

Properties so distinct, so precise, seemed as if they must be capable of experimental verification. It was requisite, then, to be prepared for some instance of want of success, and Mesmer took good care not to neglect it. The following was his declaration: "Although the fluid be universal, all animated bodies do not equally assimilate it into themselves; there are some even, though very few in number, that by their very presence destroy the effects of this fluid in the surrounding bodies."

So soon as this was admitted, as soon it was allowed to explain instances of non-success by the presence of neutralizing bodies, Mesmer no longer ran any risk of being embarrassed. Nothing prevented his announcing, in full security, "that animal magnetism could immediately cure diseases of the nerves, and mediately other diseases; that it afforded to doctors the means of judging with certainty of the origin, the nature, and the progress of the most complicated maladies; that nature, in short, offered in magnetism a universal means of curing and preserving mankind."

Before quitting Vienna, Mesmer had communicated his systematic notions to the principal learned societies of Europe. The Academy of Sciences at Paris, and the Royal Society of London, did not think proper to answer. The Academy of Berlin examined the work, and wrote to Mesmer that he was in error.

Some time after his arrival in Paris, Mesmer tried again to get into communication with the Academy of Sciences. This society even acceded to a rendezvous. But, instead of the empty words that were offered them, the academicians required experiments. Mesmer stated--I quote his words--that _it was child's play_; and the conference had no other result.

The Royal Society of Medicine, being called upon to judge of the pretended cures performed by the Austrian doctor, thought that their agents could not give a well-founded opinion "without having first duly examined the patients to ascertain their state." Mesmer rejected this natural and reasonable proposal. He wished that the agents should be content with the word of honour and attestations of the patients. In this respect, also, the severe letters of the worthy Vicq-d'Azyr put an end to communications which must have ended unsatisfactorily.

The faculty of medicine showed, we think, less wisdom. It refused to examine any thing; it even proceeded in legal form against one of its regent doctors who had associated himself, they said, with the charlatanism of Mesmer.

These barren debates evidently proved that Mesmer himself was not thoroughly sure of his theory, nor of the efficacy of the means of cure that he employed. Still the public showed itself blind. The infatuation became extreme. French society appeared at one moment divided into magnetizers and magnetized. From one end of the kingdom to the other agents of Mesmer were seen, who, with receipt in hand, put the weak in intellect under contribution.

The magnetizers had had the address to intimate that the mesmeric crises manifested themselves only in persons endowed with a certain sensitiveness. From that moment, in order not to be ranged among the insensible, both men and women, when near the _rod_, assumed the appearance of epileptics.

Was not Father Hervier really in one of those paroxysms of the disease when he wrote, "If Mesmer had lived contemporary with Descartes and Newton, he would have saved them much labour: those great men suspected the existence of the universal fluid; Mesmer has discovered the laws of its action"?

Count de Gébelin showed himself stranger still. The new doctrine would naturally seduce him by its connection with some of the mysterious practices of ancient times; but the author of _The Primitive World_ did not content himself with writing in favour of Mesmerism with the enthusiasm of an apostle. Frightful pain, violent griefs, rendered life insupportable to him; Gébelin saw death approaching with satisfaction, so from that moment he begged earnestly that he might not be carried to Mesmer's, where assuredly "he could not die." We must just mention, however, that his request was not attended to; he was carried to Mesmer's, and died while he was being magnetized.

Painting, sculpture, and engraving were constantly repeating the features of this Thaumaturgus. Poets wrote verses to be inscribed on the pedestals of the busts, or below the portraits. Those by Palisot deserve to be quoted, as one of the most curious examples of poetic licences:--

"Behold that man--the glory of his age!
Whose art can all Pandora's ills assuage.
In skill and tact no rival pow'r is known--
E'en Greece, in him, would Esculapius own."[7]

Enthusiasm having thus gone to the last limits in verse, enthusiasm had but one way left to become remarkable in prose: that is, violence. Is it not thus that we must characterize the words of Bergasse?--"The adversaries of animal magnetism are men who must one day be doomed to the execration of all time, and to the punishment of the avenging contempt of posterity."

It is rare for violent words not to be followed by violent acts. Here every thing proceeded according to the natural course of human events. We know, indeed, that some furious admirers of Mesmer attempted to suffocate Berthollet in the corner of one of the rooms of the Palais Royal, for having honestly said that the scenes he had witnessed did not appear to him demonstrative. We have this anecdote from Berthollet himself.

The pretensions of the German doctor increased with the number of his adherents. To induce him to permit only three learned men to attend his meetings, M. de Maurepas offered him, in the name of the king, 20,000 francs a year for life, and 10,000 annually for house-rent. Yet Mesmer did not accept this offer, but demanded, as a national recompense, one of the most beautiful châteaux in the environs of Paris, together with all its territorial dependencies.

Irritated at finding his claims repulsed, Mesmer quitted France, angrily vowing her to the deluge of maladies from which it would have been in his power to save her. In a letter written to Marie Antoinette, the Thaumaturgus declared that he had refused the government offers through austerity.

Through austerity!!! Are we then to believe that, as it was then pretended, Mesmer was entirely ignorant of the French language; that in this respect his meditations had been exclusively centered on the celebrated verse--

"Fools are here below for our amusement?"[8]

However this may be, the austerity of Mesmer did not prevent his being most violently angry when he learnt at Spa that Deslon continued the magnetical treatments at Paris. He returned in all haste. His partisans received him with enthusiasm, and set on foot a subscription of 100 louis per head, which produced immediately near 400,000 francs, (16,000_l._) We now feel some surprise to see, among the names of the subscribers, those of Messrs. de Lafayette, de Ségur, d'Eprémesnil.

Mesmer quitted France a second time about the end of 1781, in quest of a more enlightened government, who could appreciate superior minds. He left behind him a great number of tenacious and ardent adepts, whose importunate conduct at last determined the government to submit the pretended magnetic discoveries to be examined by four Doctors of the Faculty of Paris. These distinguished physicians solicited to have added to them some members of the Academy of Sciences. M. de Breteuil then recommended Messrs. Le Roy, Bory, Lavoisier, Franklin, and Bailly, to form part of the mixed commission. Bailly was finally named reporter.

The work of our brother-academician appeared in August, 1784. Never was a complex question reduced to its characteristic traits with more penetration and tact; never did more moderation preside at an examination, though personal passions seemed to render it impossible; never was a scientific subject treated in a more dignified and lucid style.

Nothing equals the credulity of men in whatever touches their health. This aphorism is an eternal truth. It explains how a portion of the public has returned to mesmeric practices; how I shall still perform an interesting task by giving a detailed analysis of the magnificent labours published by our fellow-academician sixty years ago. This analysis will show, besides, how daring those men were, who recently, in the bosom of another academy, constituted themselves passionate defenders of some old women's tales, which one would have supposed had been permanently buried in oblivion.

The commissioners go in the first place to the treatment by M. Deslon, examine the famous rod, describe it carefully, relate the means adopted to excite and direct magnetism. Bailly then draws out a varied and truly extraordinary table of the state of the sick people. His attention is principally attracted by the convulsions that they designated by the name of _crisis_. He remarked that in the number of persons in the crisis state, there were always a great many women, and very few men; he does not imagine any deceit, however; holds the phenomena as established, and passes on to search out their causes.

According to Mesmer and his partisans, the cause of the crisis and of the less characteristic effects, resided in a particular fluid. It was to search out proofs of the existence of this fluid, that the commissioners had first to devote their efforts. Indeed, Bailly said, "Animal magnetism may exist without being useful, but it cannot be useful if it does not exist."

The animal magnetic fluid is not luminous and visible, like electricity; it does not produce marked and manifest effects on inert matter, as the fluid of the ordinary magnet does; finally, it has no taste. Some magnetizers asserted that it had a smell; but repeated experiments proved that they were in error. The existence, then, of the pretended fluid, could be established only by its effects on animated beings.

Curative effects would have thrown the commission into an inextricable dædalus, because nature alone, without any treatment, cures many maladies. In this system of observations, they could not have hoped to learn the exact part performed by magnetism, until after a great number of cures, and after trials oftentimes repeated.

The commissioners, therefore, had to limit themselves to instantaneous effects of the fluid on the animal organism.

They then submitted themselves to the experiments, but using an important precaution. "There is no individual," says Bailly, "in the best state of health, who, if he closely attended to himself, would not feel within him an infinity of movements and variations, either of exceedingly slight pain, or of heat, in the various parts of his body.... These variations, which are continually taking place, are independent of magnetism.... The first care required of the commissioners was, not to be too attentive to what was passing within them. If magnetism is a real and powerful cause, we have no need to think about it to make it act and manifest itself; it must, so to say, force the attention, and make itself perceived by even a purposely distracted mind."

The commissioners, magnetized by Deslon, felt no effect. After the healthy people, some ailing ones followed, taken of all ages, and from various classes of society. Among these sick people, who amounted to fourteen, five felt some effects. On the remaining nine, magnetism had no effect whatever.

Notwithstanding the pompous announcements, magnetism already could no longer be considered as a certain indicator of diseases.

Here the reporter made a capital remark: magnetism appeared to have no effect on incredulous persons who had submitted to the trials, nor on children. Was it not allowable to think, that the effects obtained in the others proceeded from a previous persuasion as to the efficacy of the means, and that they might be attributed to the influence of imagination? Thence arose another system of experiments. It was desirable to confirm or to destroy this suspicion; "it became therefore requisite to ascertain to what degree imagination influences our sensations, and to establish whether it could have been in part or entirely the cause of the effects attributed to magnetism."

There could be nothing neater or more demonstrative than this portion of the work of the commissioners. They go first to Dr. Jumelin, who, let it be observed, obtains the same effects, the same crises as Deslon and Mesmer, by magnetizing according to an entirely different method, and not restricting himself to any distinction of poles; they select persons who seem to feel the magnetic action most forcibly, and put their imagination at fault by now and then bandaging their eyes.

What happens then?

When the patients see, the seat of the sensations is exactly the part that is magnetized; when their eyes are bandaged, they locate these same sensations by chance, sometimes in parts very far away from those to which the magnetizer is directing his attention. The patient, whose eyes are covered, often feels marked effects at a time when they are not magnetizing him, and remains, on the contrary, quite passive while they are magnetizing him, without his being aware of it.

Persons of all classes offer similar anomalies. An instructed physician, subjected to these experiments, "feels effects whilst nothing is being done, and often does not feel effects while he is being acted upon. On one occasion, thinking that they had been magnetizing him for ten minutes, this same doctor fancied that he felt a heat in his lumbi, which he compared to that of a stove."

Sensations thus felt, when no magnetizing was exerted, must evidently have been the effect of imagination.

The commissioners were too strict logicians to confine themselves with these experiments. They had established that imagination, in some individuals, can occasion pain, and heat--even a considerable degree of heat--in all parts of the body; but practical female Mesmerizers did more; they agitated certain people to that pitch, that they fell into convulsions. Could the effect of imagination go so far?

Some new experiments entirely did away with these doubts.

A young man was taken to Franklin's garden at Passy, and when it was announced to him that Deslon, who had taken him there, had magnetized a tree, this young man ran about the garden, and fell down in convulsions, but it was not under the magnetized tree: the crisis seized him while he was embracing another tree, very far from the former.

Deslon selected, in the treatment of poor people, two women who had rendered themselves remarkable by their sensitiveness around the famous rod, and took them to Passy. These women fell into convulsions whenever they thought themselves mesmerized, although they were not. At Lavoisier's, the celebrated experiment of the cup gave analogous results. Some plain water engendered convulsions occasionally, when magnetized water did not.

We must really renounce the use of our reason, not to perceive a proof in this collection of experiments, so well arranged that imagination alone can produce all the phenomena observed around the mesmeric rod, and that mesmeric proceedings, cleared from the delusions of imagination, are absolutely without effect. The commissioners, however, recommence the examination on these last grounds, multiply the trials, adopt all possible precautions, and give to their conclusions the evidence of mathematical demonstrations. They establish, finally and experimentally, that the action of the imagination can both occasion the crises to cease, and can engender their occurrence.

Foreseeing that people with an inert or idle mind would be astonished at the important part assigned to the imagination by the commissioners' experiments in the production of mesmeric phenomena, Bailly instanced: sudden affection disturbing the digestive organs; grief giving the jaundice; the fear of fire restoring the use of their legs to paralytic patients; earnest attention stopping the hiccough; fright blanching people's hair in an instant, &c.

The touching or stroking practised in mesmeric treatments, as auxiliaries of magnetism, properly so called, required no direct experiments, since the principal agent,--since magnetism itself, had disappeared. Bailly, therefore, confined himself, in this respect, to anatomical and physiological considerations, remarkable for their clearness and precision. We read, also, with a lively interest, in his report, some ingenious reflections on the effects of imitation in those assemblages of magnetized people. Bailly compares them to those of theatrical representations. He says: "Observe how much stronger the impressions are when there are a great many spectators, and especially in places where there is the liberty of applauding. This sign of particular emotions produces a general emotion, participated in by everybody according to their respective susceptibility. This is also observed in armies on the day of battle, when the enthusiasm of courage, as well as panic-terrors, propagate themselves with so much rapidity. The sound of the drum and of military music, the noise of the cannon, of the musquetry, the cries, the disorder, stagger the organs, impart the same movement to men's minds, and raise their imaginations to a similar degree. In this unity of intoxication, an impression once manifested becomes universal; it encourages men to charge, or determines men to fly." Some very curious examples of imitation close this portion of Bailly's report.

The commissioners finally examined whether these convulsions, occasioned by the imagination or by magnetism, could be useful in curing or easing the suffering persons. The reporter said: "Undoubtedly, the imagination of sick people often influences the cure of their maladies very much.... There are cases in which every thing must first be disordered, to enable us to restore order ... but the shock must be unique ... whereas in the public treatment by magnetism ... the habit of the crises cannot but be injurious."

This thought related to the most delicate considerations. It was developed in a report addressed to the king personally. This report was to have remained secret, but it was published some years since. It should not be regretted; the magnetic treatment, regarded in a certain point of view, pleased sick people much; they are now aware of all its dangers.

In conclusion, Bailly's report completely upsets an accredited error. This was an important service, nor was it the only one. In searching for the imaginary cause of animal magnetism, they ascertained the real power that man can exert over man, without the immediate and demonstrable intervention of any physical agent; they established that "the most simple actions and signs sometimes produce most powerful effects; that man's action on the imagination may be reduced to an art ... at least in regard to persons who have faith." This work finally showed how our faculties should be experimentally studied; in what way psychology may one day come to be placed among the exact sciences.

I have always regretted that the commissioners did not judge it expedient to add a historical chapter to their excellent work. The immense erudition of Bailly would have given it an inestimable value. I figure to myself, also, that in seeing the Mesmeric practices that have now been in use during upwards of two thousand years, the public would have asked itself whether so long an interval of time had ever been required to push a good and useful thing forward into estimation. By circumscribing himself to this point of view, a few traits would have sufficed.

Plutarch, for example, would have come to the aid of the reporter. He would have showed him Pyrrhus curing complaints of the spleen, by means of frictions made with the great toe of his right foot. Without giving one's self up to a wild spirit of interpretation, we might be permitted to see in that fact the germ of animal magnetism. I admit that one circumstance would have rather unsettled the savant: this was the white cock that the King of Macedon sacrificed to the gods before beginning these frictions.

Vespasian, in his turn, might have figured among the predecessors of Mesmer, in consequence of the extraordinary cures that he effected in Egypt by the action of his foot. It is true that the pretended cure of an old blindness, only by the aid of a little of that emperor's saliva, would have thrown some doubt on the veracity of Suetonius.

Homer and Achilles are not too far back but we might have invoked their names. Joachim Camerarius, indeed, asserted having seen, on a very ancient copy of the Iliad, some verses that the copyists sacrificed because they did not understand them, and in which the poet alluded, not to the heel of Achilles (its celebrity has been well established these three thousand years,) but to the medical properties possessed by the great toe of that same hero's right foot.

What I regret most is, the chapter in which Bailly might have related how certain adepts of Mesmer's had the hardihood to magnetize the moon, so as, on a given day, to make all the astronomers devoted to observing that body fall into a syncope; a perturbation, by the way, that no geometer, from Newton to Laplace, had thought of.

The work of Bailly gave rise to trouble, spite, and anger, among the Mesmerists. It was for many months the target for their combined attacks. All the provinces of France saw refutations of the celebrated report arise: sometimes under the form of calm discussions, decent and moderate; but generally with all the characteristics of violence, and the acrimony of a pamphlet.

It would be labour thrown away now to go to the dusty shelves of some special library, to hunt up hundreds of pamphlets, even the titles of which are now completely forgotten. The impartial analysis of that ardent controversy does not call for such labour; I believe at least that I shall attain my aim, by concentrating my attention on two or three writings which, by the strength of the arguments, the merit of the style, or the reputation of their authors, have left some trace in men's minds.

In the first rank of this category of works we must place the elegant pamphlet published by Servan, under the title of _Doubts of a Provincial, proposed to the Gentlemen Medical Commissioners commanded by the King to examine into Animal Magnetism_.

The appearance of this little work of Servan's was saluted in the camp of the Mesmerists with cries of triumph and joy. Undecided minds fell back into doubt and perplexity. Grimm wrote in Nov. 1784: "No cause is desperate. That of magnetism seemed as if it must fall under the reiterated attacks of medicine, of philosophy, of experience and of good sense.... Well, M. Servan, formerly the Attorney-General at Grenoble, has been proving that with talent we may recover from any thing, even from ridicule."

Servan's pamphlet seemed at the time the anchor of salvation for the Mesmerists. The adepts still borrow from it their principal arguments. Let us see, then, whether it has really shaken Bailly's report.

From the very commencing lines, the celebrated Attorney-General puts the question in terms deficient in exactness. If we believe him, the commissioners were called to establish a parallel between magnetism and medicine; "they were to weigh on both sides the errors and the dangers; to indicate with wise discernment what it would be desirable to preserve, and what to retrench, in the two sciences." Thus, according to Servan, the sanative art altogether would have been questioned, and the impartiality of the physicians might appear suspicious. The clever magistrate took care not to forget, on such an occasion, the eternal maxim, no one can be both judge and client. Physicians, then, ought to have been excepted.

There then follows a legitimate homage to the non-graduated academicians, members of the commission: "Before Franklin and Bailly," says the author, "every knee must bend. The one has invented much, the other has discovered much; Franklin belongs to the two worlds, and all ages seem to belong to Bailly." But arming himself afterwards with more cleverness than uprightness, with these words of the reporter, "The commissioners, especially the doctors, made an infinity of experiments," he insinuates under every form that the commissioners accepted of a very passive line of conduct. Thus, putting aside the most positive declarations, pretending even to forget the name, the titles of the reporter, Servan no longer sees before him but one class of adversaries, regent doctors of the Faculty of Paris, and then he gives full scope to his satirical vein. He holds it even as an honour that they do not regard him as impartial. "The doctors have killed me; what it has pleased them to leave me of life is not worth, in truth, my seeking a milder term.... For these twenty years I have always been worse through the remedies administered to me than through my maladies.... Even were animal magnetism a chimera, it should be tolerated; it would still be useful to mankind, by saving many individuals among them from the incontestable dangers of vulgar medicine.... I wish that medicine, so long accustomed to deceive itself, should still deceive itself now, and that the famous report be nothing but a great error...." Amidst these singular declarations, there are hundreds of epigrams still more remarkable by their ingenious and lively turn than by their novelty. If it were true, Gentlemen, that the medical corps had ever tried, knowingly, to impose on the vulgar, to hide the uncertainty of their knowledge, the weakness of their theories, the vagueness of their conceptions, under an obscure and pedantic jargon, the immortal and laughable sarcasms of Molière would not have been more than an act of strict justice. In all cases every thing has its day; now, towards the end of the eighteenth century, the most delicate, the most thorny points of doctrine were discussed with an entire good faith, with perfect lucidity, and in a style that placed many members of the faculty in the rank Of our best speakers. Servan, however, goes beyond the limits of a scientific discussion, when, without any sort of excuse, he accuses his adversaries of being anti-mesmerists through esprit de corps, and, what is worse, through cupidity.

Servan is more in his element when he points out that the present best established medical theories occasioned at their birth prolonged debates; when he reminds us that several medicines have been alternately proscribed and recommended with vehemence: the author might even have more deeply undermined this side of his subject. Instead of some unmeaning jokes, why did he not show us, for example, in a neighbouring country, two celebrated physicians, Mead and Woodward, deciding, sword in hand, the quarrel that had arisen between them as to the purgative treatment of a patient? We should then have heard Woodward, pierced through and through, rolling on the ground, and drenched in blood, say to his adversary with an exhausted voice: "The blow was harsh, but yet I prefer it to your medicine!"

It is not truth alone that has the privilege of rendering men passionate. Such was the legitimate result of these retrospective views. I now ask myself whether, by labouring to put the truth of this aphorism in full light, the passionate advocate of Mesmerism showed proof of ability!

Gentlemen, let us put all these personal attacks aside, all these recriminations against science and its agents, who unfortunately had not succeeded in restoring the health of the morose magistrate. What remains then of his pamphlet? Two chapters, only two chapters, in which Bailly's report is treated seriously. The medical commissioners and the members of the Academy had not seen, in the real effects of Mesmerism anything more than was occasioned by imagination. The celebrated magistrate exclaims on this subject, "Any one hearing this proposition spoken of would suppose, before reading the report, that the commissioners had treated and cured, or considerably relieved by the force of imagination, large tumours, inveterate obstructions, gutta serenas, and strong paralyses." Servan admitted, in short, that magnetism had effected most wonderful cures. But there lay all the question. The cures being admitted, the rest followed as a matter of course.

However incredible these cures might be, they must be admitted, they said, when numerous witnesses certified their truth. Was it owing to chance that attestations were wanting for the miracles at the Cemetery of St. Médard? Did not the counsellor to the parliament, Montgeron, state, in three large quarto volumes, the names of a great multitude of individuals who protested on their honour as illuminati, that the tomb of the Deacon, Páris, had restored sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, strength to the paralytic; that in a twinkling it cured ailing people of gouty rheumatism, of dropsy, of epilepsy, of phthisis, of abscesses, of ulcers, &c.? Did these attestations, although many emanated from persons of distinction, from the Chevalier Folard, for example, prevent the convulsionists from becoming the laughingstock of Europe? Did they not see the Duchess of Maine herself laugh at their prowess in the following witty couplet?--

"A scavenger at the palace-gate
Who, his left heel being lame,
Obtained as a most special grace,
That his right should ail the same."[9]

Was not government, urged to the utmost, at last obliged to interfere, when the multitude, carrying folly to the extremest bounds, was going to try to resuscitate the dead? In short, do we not remember the amusing distich, affixed at the time to the gate of the Cemetery of St. Médard?--

"By royal decree, we prohibit the gods
To work any miracles near to these sods."[10]

Servan must have known better than any one that in regard to testimony, and in questions of complex facts, quality always carries the day over mere numbers; let us add, that quality does not result either from titles of nobility, or from riches, nor from the social position, nor even from a certain sort of celebrity. What we must seek for in a witness is a calmness of mind and of feeling, a store of knowledge, and a very rare thing, notwithstanding the name it bears, common sense; on the other hand, what we must most avoid is the innate taste of some persons for the extraordinary, the wonderful, the paradoxical. Servan did not at all recollect these precepts in the criticism he wrote on Bailly's work.

We have already remarked that the Commissioners of the Academy and of the Faculty did not assert that the Mesmeric meetings were always ineffectual. They only saw in the crises the mere results of imagination; nor did any sort of magnetic fluid reveal itself to their eyes. I will also prove, that imagination alone generated the refutation that Servan gave to Bailly's theory. "You deny," exclaims the attorney-general, "you deny, gentlemen commissioners, the existence of the fluid which Mesmer has made to act such an important part! I maintain, on the contrary, not only that this fluid exists, but also that it is the medium by the aid of which all the vital functions are excited; I assert that imagination is one of the phenomena engendered by this agent; that its greater or less abundance in this or that among our organs, may totally change the normal intellectual state of individuals."

Everybody agrees that too great a flow of blood towards the brain produces a stupefaction of the mind. Analogous or inverse effects might evidently be produced by a subtle, invisible, imponderable fluid, by a sort of nervous fluid, or magnetic fluid (if this term be preferred), circulating through our organs. And the commissioners took good care not to speak on this subject of impossibility. Their thesis was more modest; they contented themselves with saying that nothing demonstrated the existence of such a fluid. Imagination, therefore, had no share in their report; but in Servan's refutation, on the contrary, imagination was the chief actor.

One thing that was still less proved, if possible, than any of those that we have been speaking of, is the influence that the magnetic fluid of the magnetizer might exert on the magnetized person.

In magnetism, properly so called, in that which physicists have studied with so much care and success, the phenomena are constant. They are reproduced exactly under the same conditions of form, of duration, and of quantity, when certain bodies, being present to each other, find themselves exactly in the same relative positions. That is the essential and necessary character of all purely material and mechanical action. Was it thus in the pretended phenomena of animal magnetism? In no way. To-day the crises would occur in the space of some seconds; to-morrow they may require several entire hours; and finally, on another day, other circumstances remaining the same, the effect would be positively null. A certain magnetizer exercised a brisk action on a certain patient, and was absolutely powerless on another who, on the contrary, entered into a crisis under the earliest efforts of a second magnetizer. Instead of one or two universal fluids, there must, then, to explain the phenomena, be as many distinct fluids, and constantly acting, as there exist animated or inanimate beings in the world.

The necessity of such a hypothesis evidently upset Mesmerism from its very foundations; yet the illuminati did not judge thus. All bodies became a focus of special emanations, more or less subtle, more or less abundant, and more or less dissimilar. So far the hypothesis found very few contradictors, even among rigorous minds; but soon these individual corporeal emanations were endowed, relatively towards those, (without the least appearance of proof,) either with a great power of assimilation, or with a decided antagonism, or with a complete neutrality; but they pretended to see in these occult qualities the material causes of the most mysterious affections of the soul. Oh! then doubt had a legitimate right to take possession of all those minds that had been taught by the strict proceedings of science not to rest satisfied with vain words. In the singular system that I have been explaining, when Corneille says,--

"There are some secret knots, some sympathies,
By whose relations sweet assorted souls
Attach themselves the one to the other...."[11]

and when the celebrated Spanish Jesuit Balthazar Gracian spoke of the natural relationship of minds and hearts, both the one and the other alluded, assuredly without suspecting it, to the mixture, penetration, and easy crossing of two atmospheres.

"I love thee not, Sabidus," wrote Martial, "and I know not why; all that I can tell thee is, that I love thee not." Mesmerists would soon have relieved the poet from his doubts. If Martial loved not Sabidus, it was because their atmospheres could not intermingle without occasioning a kind of storm.

Plutarch informs us that the conqueror of Arminius fainted at the sight of a cock. Antiquity was astonished at this phenomenon. What could be more simple, however? the corporeal emanations of Germanicus and of the cock exercised a repulsive action the one on the other.

The illustrious biographer of Cheronea declares, it is true, that the presence of the cock was not requisite, that its crowing produced exactly the same effect on the adopted son of Tiberius. Now, the crowing may be heard a long way off; the crowing, then, would seem to possess the power of transporting the corporeal emanations of the king of the lower court with great rapidity through space. The thing may appear difficult to believe. As for myself, I think it would be puerile to stop at such a difficulty; have we not leaped high over other difficulties far more embarrassing?

The Maréchal d'Albret was still worse off than Germanicus: the atmosphere that made him fall into a syncope exhaled from the head of a wild boar. A live, complete, whole wild boar produced no effect; but on perceiving the head of the animal detached from the body, the Maréchal was struck as if with lightning. You see, gentlemen, to what sad trials military men would be exposed, if the Mesmerian theory of atmospheric conflicts were to regain favour. We ought to be carefully on our guard against a ruse de guerre, of which no one till then had ever thought,--that is, against cocks, wild boars, &c.,--for through them an army might suddenly be deprived of its commander-in-chief. "It would also be requisite not to entrust command," Montaigne says, "to men who would fly from apples more than from arquebusades."

It is not only amongst the corpuscular emanations of living animals that the Mesmerists asserted conflicts to occur. They unhesitatingly extended their speculations to dead bodies. Some ancients dreamt that a catgut cord made of a wolf's intestines would never strike in unison with one made from a lamb's intestine; a discord of atmospheres renders the phenomenon possible. It is still a conflict of corporeal emanations that explains the other aphorism of an ancient philosopher: "The sound of a drum made with a wolf's skin takes away all sonorousness from a drum made with a lamb's skin."

Here I pause, Gentlemen. Montesquieu said: "When God created the brains of human beings, he did not intend to guarantee them."