Chapter XIII: Letter X: describes the method of inducing trances artificially,

whereby they may be reproduced at pleasure, either in the interests of philosophical inquiry, or for important practical purposes.

I dedicate the present Letter to the reconsideration of the most knotty points already handled, and to the investigation of a few other questions, the solution of which is not less difficult.

I. _Hypothesis of an Abnormal Psychico-neural Relation as the essence of trance._—I admit that it is a very clumsy expedient to assume that the mind can, as it were, get loose in the living body, and, while remaining there in a partially new alliance, exercise some of its faculties in unaccustomed organs—which organs lose, for the same time, their normal participation in consciousness; and farther, that the mind can, partially indeed, but so completely disengage itself from the living body, that its powers of apprehension may range with what we are accustomed to consider the properties of free spirit, unlimitedly as to space and time. I adopt the hypothesis upon compulsion—that is to say, because I see no other way of accounting for the most remarkable trance-phenomena. In due time, it is to be expected that a simple inductive expression of the facts will take the place of my hypothetical explanation. But not the less may the latter, crude as it is, prove of temporary use, by bringing together in a connected view many new and diversified phenomena, and planting the subject in a position favourable for scientific scrutiny.

Let me arrange, in their most persuasive order, the facts which seem to justify the hypothesis above enunciated.

1. In many cases of waking-trance, the patient does not see with his eyes, hear with his ears, nor taste with his tongue, and the sense of touch appears to have deserted the skin. At the same time, the patient sees, hears, and tastes things applied to the pit of the stomach, or sees and hears with the back of the head, or tips of the fingers.

2. In the first imperfect trance-waking from initiatory trance, the patient’s apprehension of sensuous impressions often appears to have entirely deserted his own body, and to be in relation with the sentient apparatus in his mesmeriser’s frame—for, if you pull his hair, or put mustard in his mouth, he does not feel either; but he is actually alive to the sensations which these impressions excite, if the hair of the mesmeriser is pulled, or mustard placed on the mesmeriser’s tongue. The sensations excited thus in the mesmeriser, and these alone, the entranced person realizes as his own sensations.

3. About the same time, the entranced person displays no will of his own, but his voluntary muscles execute the gestures which his mesmeriser is making, even when standing behind his back. His will takes its guidance from sympathy with the exerted will of the other.

4. Presently, if his trance-faculties continue to be developed, the entranced person enters into communication with the entire mind of his mesmeriser. His apprehension seems to penetrate the brain of the latter, and is capable of reading all his thoughts.

5. In the last three steps, the apprehension of the entranced person appears to have left his own being to the extent described, and to have entered into relation with the mind or nervous system of another person. Now, if the patient become still more lucid, his apprehension seems to range abroad through space, and to identify material objects, and penetrate the minds of other human beings, at indefinite distances.

6. At length the entranced person displays the power of revealing future events—a power which, as far as it relates to things separate from his own bodily organization, or that of others, seems to me to show that his apprehension is in relation with higher spiritual natures, or with the Fountain of Truth itself.

In the following pages I have given examples of those of the powers here attributed to very lucid clairvoyantes, which I have not previously instanced.

* * * * *

II. _Transposition of the Senses._—No doubt these phenomena, irregular as they seem at present, follow a definite law, which has to be determined by future observations and experiments. Mr. Williamson found some of his clairvoyantes see with the back of the head, some with the side of the head—some best at seven inches, others at as many feet off. In the case which Mr. Bulteel reported to me, the lady read with her hand and fingers; even when he pressed a note against the back of her neck, she read it instantly: but in this case actual contact was necessary. In the case of a governess, artificially brought to the state of waking-trance by Mr. Williamson, the same faculty was observed. With one hand she used to hold open the book to be read, resting it against her chest, the pages being turned away from her: the contents of these she read fluently, touching the words with the forefinger of the other hand. In one very interesting case, which I witnessed here in the autumn of 1849, the young lady, clairvoyant through mesmerism, sitting in the corner of a sofa, something reclined, would have seen, had she peeped through a linear aperture between her seemingly closed eyelids, the lower half of things only. As it was, the reverse was the fact; and when we asked her what she saw, she told us the cornice and upper part of the room. Then, without saying any thing, I raised my cap upon my stick to within her declared range of trance-vision; she exclaimed, “Ah, Guilleaume Tell!” Her mother, whom she heard speak, but had not hitherto seen, in this trance, she recognised at once, when she stood up upon a chair. To read, in this trance, appeared a very painful effort to her; but she was certainly able to make out some words when she pressed a written paper against her forehead. It was evident that she could now visually discern things by some new faculty of apprehension localized there. To enable her to see things at a few feet distance, they had equally to be placed _opposite_ to her forehead. In another case, in which the girl, when entranced, certainly saw with the knuckles of one hand, on smearing the back of that hand with ink, she could no longer see with it.

The above instances show how various are the features attending the transposition of one sense alone in waking trance; and they suggest a multitude of experiments. I remember, in 1838, on communicating facts of this kind to a clear-headed practical man, he raised this objection to their credibility: “If we can see without eyes, why has the Creator given us eyes!” The objection is specious enough, but it admits of an obvious answer. The state of trance is one of disease, transient and temporary; it is during its persistence only that this new power of apprehension is manifested. In our natural state, the mind is intended to operate and try experiences in subordination to matter, and through definite material organs, in which it is, in truth, imprisoned. Such is the law of our normal mortal being. Accordingly, when the trance is over, and the mind has returned to its normal relations with the body, all its trance-apprehensions are forgotten by it—they form no part of our moral life.

* * * * *

III. _Sources of Error in the communications of entranced persons._—I put aside cases of deliberate deception; but when persons are really entranced, they are liable, in various ways, to be deceived themselves, and to deceive others, as to the value of their revealments. There is often, in waking trance, a great vivacity and disposition to be communicative from the first. Those, again, who have frequently been thrown into trance, and have become familiar with their new condition, are generally anxious to shine in it, and make a display. This disposition is further heightened when the entranced person expects to be rewarded for his performance.

1. When indulging their lively fancy, they are liable to have a sort of waking dream, during which they describe imaginary scenes with the precision and minuteness of reality, and represent them as actual, passing at some place they name.

2. They are liable to recall past impressions, and to deliver bits of old conclusions for intuitions.

3. They are liable to adopt the thoughts of others who may be near them, especially those of their mesmeriser, and to deliver them as trance-revelations.

4. In one instance which came to my knowledge, a young lady, previously unacquainted with mathematics or astronomy, would, when entranced, and sitting with her mother and sister, write fluently off pages of an astronomical treatise, calculations, diagrams, and all. She averred and believed in her entranced state—for, when awake, it was all a mystery to her—that this performance was the product of an intuition. Her manuscript was afterwards found to run word for word with an article in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_. That book, however, stood in the library, in a remote part of the house. She certainly had it not with her when she used to scribble its contents; nor did she remember ever having looked into it, awake or asleep. She said—when entranced, and this had been found out—that she believed she read the book as it stood in the library.

5. With some imperfectly lucid patients, the exercise of their new faculties appears to be fatiguing, and to call for great exertion. So they are occasionally with difficulty led to answer at all; and then when inconsiderately pressed, they are tempted to say any thing, just to be left tranquil.

It is difficult to say how the preceding sources of error are to be effectually guarded against. Possibly, by rigid training from the first, the patient might be brought to distinguish false promptings from genuine intuitions. But even the latter vary in lucidity and certainty. This admission was made to a friend of mine by M. Alexis, the celebrated Parisian clairvoyante. The reader cannot fail to be interested by the following account, given by M. Alexis when entranced, of his own powers, and their mode of operation:—

“Pour voir des objets éloignés,” observed M. Alexis, “mon âme ne se dégage pas de mon corps. C’est ma volonté qui dérige mon âme, mon esprit, sans sortir de cette chambre où je suis. Si mon âme sortit, je serais mort; c’est ma volonté. Ma volonté suffit pour anéantir pour quelque tems la matière. Ainsi quand cette volonté est en jeu, la boite matérielle de mon individu n’est plus. Les murs, l’espace, et même le tems, n’existent plus. Mais ce n’est qu’un rêve plus ou moins lucide. Quelquefois ma vue est meilleure qu’à d’autres. Ma vue n’est jamais la même. Une fois je suis disposé pour voir une sorte de choses, et une autre fois une autre sorte. En regardant votre chambre dans un quartier éloigné d’ici, je ne vois pas les rues ni les maisons intermédiaires. La seule chose (alors) qui est dans la pensée est la personne qui me parle. Je vois les objets d’une manière plus incomplète que par mes sens, moins sure. Il serait impossible de fair comprendre comment je vois. Plus il y a de l’attraction—plus j’éprouve de l’attraction aux objets que je veux voir, ou qui me touche—plus il y a de lumière; plus j’éprouve de répulsion, plus il y a de ténèbres.”

* * * * *

IV. _Of the Different Qualities of Od in different individuals._—Von Reichenbach observed the Od light to have different colours under different circumstances, and that, while Od-negative produces the sensation of a draft of cool air, Od positive produces a sense as of a draft of warm air. An easy way to verify the last phenomenon is to beg some one to hold the forefinger of the right hand pointed to your left palm, at a quarter of an inch distance, and afterwards his left forefinger to your right palm, when the two sensations, and their difference, are appreciable by the majority of persons.

Persons entranced by mesmeric procedures are often keenly alive to the above impressions. They see light emanating from the finger-tips of the mesmeriser, and feel an agreeable afflatus from his manipulations. Others who approach them affect them in different ways—some not disagreeably, while others excite a chilly, shivering feeling, and the patient begs they will keep off from him.

A gentleman narrated to me the following case. He had been for months in anxious attendance upon a brother who was in very delicate health, and exquisitely sensitive to mesmerism. My friend used himself to mesmerise his brother; but he found it necessary, in order to soothe and not excite him by the passes, to cover the patient with a folded blanket, so as to dull the agency of his Od-emanation. There was but another person, of several who had been tried, whose hand the brother could bear at all; this was a maid-servant, who herself was highly susceptible, and became entranced. She said that she perceived, when entranced, the suitableness of her influence, and that of the brother, to the patient; and she used the singular expression, that they were nearly of a colour. She said that the patient’s Od-emanation was of a pink colour, and that the brother’s was a brick colour—a flatter, deeper, red; and she endeavoured to find some one else with the same coloured Od to suit her master.

In some experiments made at Dr. Leighton’s house in Gower Street, I remember it was distinctly proved that each of the experimenters produced different effects on the same person. The patient was one of the Okeys, of mesmeric celebrity. The party consisted of Dr. Elliotson, Mr. Wheatstone, Dr. Grant, Mr. Kiernan, and some others. Mr. Wheatstone tabulated the results. Each of us mesmerised a sovereign; and it was found that on each trial the trance-coma, which contact with the thus mesmerised gold induced, had a characteristic duration for each of us. Is it possible that each living person has his distinguishable measure of Od, either in intensity or quality?

* * * * *

V. _The Od-Force is the usual channel of establishing mesmeric relation._—I take it for granted that the Od-force—the existence and some of the properties of which have been inductively ascertained by Von Reichenbach—is the same agent with that which Mesmer assumed to be the instrument in his operations. Then, in support of the above proposition, I cite two instances. Mr. Williamson, at my request, mesmerised and entranced the Rev. Mr. Fox at Weilbach, in the autumn of 1847. It was the second sitting, and Mr. Fox was beginning to pass from the initiatory stage of trance into trance half-waking. Mr. Williamson addressed him, and he returned an answer. Other parties in the room, including myself, then addressed Mr. Fox, and he seemed not to hear one of us. Then Mr. Williamson gave me his hand, and I again spoke to Mr. Fox; he then heard me, and spoke in answer. When, having left go Mr. Williamson’s hand, I spoke again to Mr. Fox, he heard me not. On my renewing contact with Mr. Williamson, Mr. Fox heard me again. He heard me as long as I was brought into relation with him, and that relation was clearly due to the establishment of an Od-current between myself and Mr. Williamson, with whom Mr. Fox was already in trance-relation. Every one who has seen something of Mesmerism will recognise in the above story one of its commonest phenomena.

But a more conclusive instance still has been already mentioned in