First. A National Asylum, to be named, THE BRITISH MESMERIC
INSTITUTION, should be founded and endowed. England should take the
lead. A Professorship of Magnetism should be founded. All Sanatory
Asylums to be obliged to furnish their experience periodically, and
be under control of the Institution, which should be possessed of
power to undiploma the medical practitioner who refuses to mesmerise.
Self-mesmerising to Clairvoyance, to be taught, which is as teachable
as ventriloquism; the principle is the same of both,--the theory is
that of sound.
Through self-mesmerising, the blind and eyeless would be extricated
occasionally from the shadow leading to the valley of death and
be enabled to follow some useful calling. Some blind, illiterate
clairvoyant, may have superior _connoisseurship_, entitling him to fill
the academic chair. Through mesmerism the resuscitating process can be
brought under rules of science. Through clairvoyance the geography of
the globe may yet be improved; the northern passage discovered; the
astronomer assisted in his stellar speculations beyond the possibility
of mere telescopic discovery. On ship-board, the voluntary clairvoyant
may make discovery of the haze-hidden lighthouse and wave-hidden shoal.
In the hands of the clairvoyant the telescope and microscope, will, in
time, make us acquainted with other worlds, other beings, and other of
the wonderful works of the GREAT GOD OF NATURE!
The Seeker after God from the book of God's own composing, the holy
volume of his own works, through voluntary clairvoyance, will feel
himself in the enjoyment of a second nature, the fit inhabitant of
an intellectual world, in which the powers of thought are without
limits. And who can say what discovery of abstract truths may not be
elicited from the conversation of two or more clairvoyants in mutual
report, all of exalted talent and superior education? Other worlds,
ere this be past, may open to our view, and their inhabitants become
clairvoyantly familiar to human observation. The idea is pregnant
with hope; it presumes that we are not inhabitants of only the earth,
but the universe; which may be considered a natural, _never_-dying
hope. Why, then, should the science be opposed which has already been
so beneficial to our species, and promises to make known the never
yet discovered wonders of the animal economy? Surely they will be
yet ashamed of having done those things, the fruit of which is the
bitterness of remorse.