In the following Letters I have endeavoured to exhibit in their true
light the singular natural phenomena of which old superstition and
modern charlatanism in turn availed themselves—to indicate their laws,
and to develop their theory. The subject is so important that I
might well have approached it in a severer guise. But, slight as this
performance may appear, I profess to have employed upon it the keenest
and most patient efforts of reflection of which I am capable. And as
to its tone at the commencement, and the prominence given to popular
and trivial topics, I candidly avow that, without some such artifice, I
doubt whether I should have found a publisher of repute to publish, or
a circle of readers to read, my lucubrations.
“Cosi all’ egro fanciul porgiamo aspersi
Di soave licor gli orli del vaso;
Succhi amari ingannato intanto ei beve,
E dall’ inganno suo vita riceve.”
It was in the winter of 1846 that the original seven Letters were
written, of which the present fourteen are the third and expanded
reprint. The hour had come for successfully assailing certain already
shaking prejudices of the reading public. The Selbstschau of Zschokke,
and the researches of Von Reichenbach, were in the hands of the
literary and philosophic. The seer-gift of the former (see Letter IV.)
had established the fact that one mind can enter into direct though
one-sided communion with another. The undenied Od-force of the latter
(see Letter I.) is evidently the same influence with that, the first
crude announcement of which, by Mesmer, had scared the world into
disbelief. It had now become possible to explain ghostly warnings,
and popular prophecies, the wonders of natural trance, and of animal
magnetism, without having recourse to a single unproven principle.
I therefore made the attempt; other more efficient labourers have
co-operated in the same object; and public opinion is no longer hostile
to this class of inquiries.
BAD WEILBACH, near MAYENCE,
_1st August, 1851_.