All mesmerically-produced phenomena are the consequence of the passes.
The immediate effect of the passes is de-electrisation of the nerves,
that is, of their contents, which leaves them polarised (as is the
case in natural sleep), but more intensely than is effected by the
comatose flow. In the ordinary condition, the contents of the nerves
may be likened to milky water in a barometer tube; in natural sleep, to
the same, with a less degree of milkiness--the latter subsiding from
the ends to the middle portion of the water; and in the clairvoyant
condition of the nerves, to the milkiness having so completely
subsided as to leave the water above and below the middle of the tube
transparent. In the ordinary condition, the nervous fluid is clogged,
as it were, with intermixed electric matter, which, by marring the
regular continuity of the fluid from without to the brain, reduces in
some degree the exciting pressure on the brain, which prevents the
function of the fluid being employed to its utmost. In this encumbered
state, the fluid may be said to act on the brain, as the clapper when
muffled on a bell. Still the excited pressure is sufficiently strong,
and the mental result sufficiently distinct for all human purposes.
When to the clairvoyant degree the nerves have been denuded of impeding
electric matter, the nervous fluid is enabled to act on the brain as
if unmuffled; and as its continuity from the orifices of the retina
through space is not in any manner altered, so, to the altered electric
condition, mesmerically effected, on the contents of the nerves between
their orifices and the brain, we must attribute all mesmerically
produced phenomena; and without supposing that the brain is quickened
into a higher degree of sensibility, or that any one of its various
organs has acquired some exalted degree of psychologic ability.
That _long vision_ and _opaque vision_ should be consequences of
cleansing, as it were, the nerves of intercepting minus-pressure
matter, is nothing surprising, it is as removing dust from the window
to better our vision: the physiology is traceable, and the psychology
not more incomprehensible than its hourly occurrence in a minor degree,
to which, as sensible effects, we are indebted for all we know, and by
which we abide, without inquiry into their nature or origin; so perfect
is the design of Nature in our make for supplying all that is requisite
to the comfort and enjoyment of man in his present state of existence.
_Long vision_, during the clairvoyant state, or the recognition of
objects greatly remote by the sensation each promotes, has its wonder
much more in the _nature of the medium of space_ than in the familiar
mental effect. The optically promoted sensation is proof that the
external object, were it at the antipodes, is in mediate connection
with not only the nervous fluid of the retina, but the brain. Long
and ordinary vision have the same theory: in both states the same
chromatic cerebral organ is excited by the nervous fluid; in both the
nervous fluid is continuous from the brain to the external body; and in
both the object perceived is the sensation of colour. That the eye-ball
lenses are concerned in long and opaque, as in short vision, however
in the two former, the eyes may be bandaged (to satisfy the desire of
spectators, otherwise useless, if not worse,) is obvious, from the
knowledge of form being connected with the sensation, as in every
instance of optically-excited perception.
By the passes, the nervous fluid is freed from the visual intercepting
electric matter; which matter, like the colouring matter in stained
glass, renders the continuity of the visual medium or fluid within the
optic nerve impaired.
To account for the phenomenon of much longer than ordinary vision,
there is nothing in the mesmeric case to effect the difference, or
refer to, but the de-electrised condition of the nervous fluid. From
which it would seem that the visual line from the most remote object,
is always as continuous to the brain as from one within arm's length
before the face; and that the degree of cerebral exciting pressure
on the longer line is rendered equally efficacious, _now_, that the
electric impediment has been removed from the nervous fluid; hence,
that the normal intermixed quantity of electric matter with the nervous
fluid prevents us being clairvoyant at all times, is reasonable to
conclude.
_Opaque vision_, or the "seeing through opaque bodies," is not the
absurdity so generally imagined when judged and reasoned on according
to the true principles of visual perception: the facts of clairvoyance
place the absurdity on the denier.
As the medium of space furnishes all the nerves with the true and only
cerebral exciting fluid, which is necessarily all-pervading, and proved
to be so by the auditory sense, or "hearing through stone walls,"
the possibility of seeing through such bodies is made manifest, and
_clairvoyantly_, has been proved. Misled by the idea that the eye-balls
look through solid glass, yet cannot look through a stone, to doubt and
deny is pardonable; yet nothing else is requisite, than that the visual
medium shall be continuous from the object to the brain, no matter how
many opaque objects lie between, for the perception being excited, and
promoted by the remote object: the object perceived is the sensation
of this or that colour, as in transparent vision. It is no ordinary
circumstance, that of "seeing through opaque bodies;" neither is it
an ordinary circumstance, the extreme de-electrised condition of the
nervous fluid, _on which the extra-ordinary of the phenomenon depends_.
In removing the partial opacity of a crystal by means of fire, the
hindrance to the visual continuity, electric matter, is displaced;
but as no such electric displacement from a stone wall is effected or
practicable, while to the clairvoyant the continuity is as were there
no electric impediment in the wall, is proof additional that the medium
of space, the common cerebral exciting cause, pervades all things, the
human body included, and hence the being in _Report_.
Now that mesmeric practice and proof have stifled all open opposition,
by the influential ignorant, to the surprising truths of the science,
that all persons cannot be mesmerised to the clairvoyant stage, is in
nowise prejudicial to mesmerism, or to the SCIENCE OF THE ECONOMY being
intimately connected with medical practice; neither are occasional
failures by the clairvoyant, especially in trial tests, some of which
exhibit samples of complicated confusion, as if for the purpose of
suppression, instead of laudably exalting the all-important science of
mesmerism. Had the very liberal offer of a hundred pounds been under
less complicated conditions, the bank-note most certainly would have
been deciphered and changed hands. Had the note been spread open,
while enclosed between two plates of sheet-iron, and then read by the
clairvoyant, the test would have been sufficient to convince the most
steady, sturdy, staunch unbeliever, and the _dénouement_ affirmative
to every dispassionate observer. But from being folded line upon line,
letter on letter, at least three deep, the misarrangement destroyed
most effectually all reading order. A Newtonian would say, that,
"the commixed rays proceeding from the several overlaid typographic
characters, and from the lines placed tier over tier, could never
form the image of even a single letter on the retina, with anything
resembling legible clearness;" therefore the trial must fail most
inevitably.