The being in report one with another, the mesmerised with the
mesmeriser, is proved possible, and from being effected by the passes
is proved also to be natural,--not satanic or supernatural, the weakest
of all ideas. Within Nature there can be nothing supernatural; nor out
of Nature, or of the other worlds, anything in the power of living man
or poor human nature to command or imitate. However, as believers
are not reasoners, except in the arithmetic of funds, to the reformer
_Time_, must be left the conversion to Reason.
Throughout the whole of Nature there is nothing insulated, not even
an atom. Involved in a universal medium of pressure, all things must
be in contact, mediate or immediate. The atmosphere is a universal
connecting link. As by the sea the most distantly-situated islands are
in mediate connection, so are all mankind by means of the atmosphere.
Still this atmospheric connection is limited to margin with margin,
surface with surface. By the all-pervading medium of space, the
interior of all living beings is in mediate connection, equally as the
interior of submerged sponges by the water. As "light" would pervade
and connect our bodies were they glass, so does the medium of space.
But were mankind so left, it is difficult to conceive how the organic
functions could possibly take place, and impossible to say how personal
individuality could be, as at present, an independent animal privilege.
Although the medium of space is continuous through all bodies, the
regular continuity is impaired by the elements of the atmosphere
between each. The atmosphere not only protects all living bodies
against the maximum and all excess of pressure, but in some
considerable degree insulates the bodies of persons from each other,
just as fog and small snow intercept the visual continuity and would
render "rays of light" interruptedly continuous; so do the intermixed
atoms of the atmosphere the regular continuity of the medium of space
between person and person, as respects surfaces. Within the body,
insulation is still more complete: here, electric matter and air
abound to the exclusion of all excess of medium of space; by which the
different organs remain, in a manner disconnected, or so far, as that
the functional action of each organ has its distinct period, instead of
the action of the whole being simultaneously performed. Beside these
means and degrees of insulation, the non-conducting coating and lining
of the nerves insulate more completely their elementary contents, by
which the nerves are not only tubes of separation but insulation, and
are direct conducting channels of the nervous fluid through the body
from its external source to the brain.
Although man is thus isolated from man, the isolating means do not
prevent the medium of space being continuous through all, and from one
to another; which is manifested by the clairvoyant, who has the like
of the sensation excited in the brain of the mesmeriser repeated or
excited in his own brain; as when the mesmeriser masticates and the
sensation of the same flavour is known by the mesmerised. The sensation
is nothing transferable; taste is not by the tongue; hence, by the
sensation being excited in succession in the brain of each person,
is the only conceivable mode, in reason, why the second should know
what the first is masticating. The nervous fluid of the two may be
supposed to be derived from the medium of space between them; then,
by the medium of space lying between, the nervous fluids of the two
are rendered continuous one with the other, and is so at all times,
but only when the nervous fluid is mesmerically de-electrised is it
productive of clairvoyant perceptions. Community of sensation, or
the _same_ sensation being perceived by different persons, is an
impossibility. The first sensation is only where it has been excited,
in the brain of the mesmeriser; and supposing the matter of the nervous
fluid continuous direct from his brain to that of the patient, in
it, what has the latter to perceive?--nothing; neither is perception
separable in idea from the result of cerebral excitement. It is to
be hoped that the desultory ideas here advanced may tend to a better
knowledge on this singular mesmeric discovery. Even the foregoing may
be objected to with apparent reason, on consideration of what is termed
"community of thought," wherein there is no previous sensation to be
repeated. To account for which requires more cerebral information than
has as yet been brought to light; when satisfactorily known it may
show, whether or not community in dreaming may be effected. Report
would be impossible were there not intimate connection of brain with
brain.