CHAPTER VA "Hermes, who is of my ordinances ever the bearer Then taking his staff, with which he the eyelids of mortals "I saw the Samothracian rings Leap, and steel-filings boil in a brass dish So soon as underneath it there was placed The magnet-stone; and with wild terror seemed The iron to flee from it in stern hate. . . ."-Lucretius, Book VI. "But that which especially distinguishes the Brotherhood is their marvellous knowledge of the r Bources of the medical art. They work not by charms but by simples." ONE (MS. Account of the Origin and Attributes of the True Rosicrucians.) NE of the truest things ever said by a man of science is the remark made by Professor Cooke in his New Chemistry. "The history of Science shows that the age must be prepared before scientific truths can take root and grow. The barren premonitions of science have been barren because these seeds of truth fell upon unfruitful soil; and, as soon as the fulness of the time has come, the seed has taken root and the fruit has ripened. . . every student is surprised to find how very little is the share of new truth which even the greatest genius has added to the previous stock." The revolution through which chemistry has recently passed, is well calculated to concentrate the attention of chemists upon this fact; and it would not be strange, if, in less time than it has required to effect it, the claims of the alchemists would be examined with impartiality, and studied from a rational point of view. To bridge over the narrow gulf which now separates the new chemistry from old alchemy, is little, if harder than what they have done in going from dualism to the law of Avogadro. any As Ampère served to introduce Avogadro to our contemporary chemists, so Reichenbach will perhaps one day be found to have paved the way with his OD for the just appreciation of Paracelsus. It was more than fifty years before molecules were accepted as units of chemical cal. culations; it may require less than half that time to cause the superlative merits of the Swiss mystic to be acknowledged. The warning paragraph about healing mediums,* which will be found elsewhere, might have * From a London Spiritualist Journal. been written by one who had read his works. "You must understand," he says, "that the magnet is that spirit of life in man which the infected seeks, as both unite themselves with chaos from without. healthy are infected by the unhealthy through magnetic attraction." And thus the The primal causes of the diseases afflicting mankind; the secret relations between physiology and psychology, vainly tortured by men of modern science for some clew to base their speculations upon; the specifics and remedies for every ailment of the human body—all are described and accounted for in his voluminous works. Electro-magnetism, the so-called discovery of Professor Oersted, had been used by Paracelsus three centuries before. This may be demonstrated by examining critically his mode of curing disease. Upon his achievements in chemistry there is no need to enlarge, for it is admitted by fair and unprejudiced writers that he was one of the greatest chemists of his time.* Brierre de Boismont terms him a "genius" and agrees with Deleuze that he created a new epoch in the history of medicine. The secret of his successful and, as they were called, magic cures lies in his sovereign contempt for the so-called learned "authorities" of his age. "Seeking for truth," says Paracelsus, "I considered with myself that if there were no teachers of medicine in this world, how would I set to learn the art? No otherwise than in the great open book of nature, written with the finger of God. . . . I am accused and denounced for not having entered in at the right door of art. But which is the right one? Galen, Avicenna, Mesue, Rhasis, or honest nature? I believe, the last! I believe, the last! Through this door I entered, and the light of nature, and no apothecary's lamp directed me on my way." This utter scorn for established laws and scientific formulas, this aspiration of mortal clay to commingle with the spirit of nature, and look to it alone for health, and help, and the light of truth, was the cause of the inveterate hatred shown by the contemporary pigmies to the fire-philosopher and alchemist. No wonder that he was accused of charlatanry and even drunkenness. Of the latter charge, Hemmann boldly and fearlessly exonerates him, and proves that the foul accusation proceeded from 'Oporinus, who lived with him some time in order to learn his secrets, but his object was defeated; hence, the evil reports of his disciples and apothecaries." He was the founder of the School of Animal Magnetism and the discoverer of the occult properties of the magnet. He was branded by his age as a sorcerer, because the cures he made were marvell us. Three centuries later, Baron Du Potet was also accused of sor cery and demonolatry by the Church of Rome, and of charlatanry by the 66 * Hemmann: "Medico-Surgical Essays," Berl., 1778. A GREAT CHANCE THROWN AWAY. 165 academicians of Europe. As the fire-philosophers say, it is not the chemist who will condescend to look upon the "living fire" otherwise that his colleagues do. "Thou hast forgotten what thy fathers taught thee about it-or rather, thou hast never known . . . it is too loud for thee !" * A work upon magico-spiritual philosophy and occult science would be incomplete without a particular notice of the history of animal magnetism, as it stands since Paracelsus staggered with it the schoolmen of the latter half of the sixteenth century. We will observe briefly its appearance in Paris when imported from Germany by Anton Mesmer. Let us peruse with care and caution the old papers now mouldering in the Academy of Sciences of that capital, for there we will find that, after having rejected in its turn every discov ery that was ever made since Galileo, the Immortals capped the climax by turning their backs upon magnetism and mesmerism. They voluntarily shut the doors before themselves, the doors which led to those greatest mysteries of nature, which lie hid in the dark regions of the psychical as well as the physical world. The great universal solvent, the Alkahest, was within their reach-they passed it by; and now, after nearly a hundred years have elapsed, we read the following confession : "Still it is true that, beyond the limits of direct observation, our science (chemistry) is not infallible, and our theories and systems, although they may all contain a kernel of truth, undergo frequent changes, and are often revolutionized." + To assert so dogmatically that mesmerism and animal magnetism are but hallucinations, implies that it can be proved. But where are these proofs, which alone ought to have authority in science? Thousands of times the chance was given to the academicians to assure themselves of its truth; but, they have invariably declined. Vainly do mesmerists and healers invoke the testimony of the deaf, the lame, the diseased, the dying, who were cured or restored to life by simple manipulations and the apostolic "laying on of hands." "Coincidence" is the usual reply, when the fact is too evident to be absolutely denied; "will-o'-thewisp," "exaggeration," "quackery," are favorite expressions, with our but too numerous Thomases. Newton, the well-known American healer, has performed more instantaneous cures than many a famous physician of New York City has had patients in all his life; Jacob, the Zouave, has had a like success in France. Must we then consider the accumulated testimony of the last forty years upon this subject to be all illusion, confederacy with clever charlatans, and lunacy? Even to breathe • Robert Fludd: "Treatise III." Prof. J. P. Cooke: "New Chemistry.” such a stupendous fallacy would be equivalent to a self-accusation of lunacy. Notwithstanding the recent sentence of Leymarie, the scoffs of the skeptics and of a vast majority of physicians and scientists, the unpopu larity of the subject, and, above all, the indefatigable persecutions of the Roman Catholic clergy, fighting in mesmerism woman's traditional enemy, so evident and unconquerable is the truth of its phenomena that even the French magistrature was forced tacitly, though very reluctantly, to admit the same. The famous clairvoyante, Madame Roger, was charged with obtaining money under false pretenses, in company with her mesmerist, Dr. Fortin. On May 18th, 1876, she was arraigned before the Tribunal Correctionnel of the Seine. Her witness was Baron Du Potet, the grand master of mesmerism in France for the last fifty years; her advocate, the no less famous Jules Favre. Truth for once triumphed--the accusation was abandoned. Was it the extraordinary eloquence of the orator, or bare facts incontrovertible and unimpeachable that won the day? But Leymarie, the editor of the Revue Spirite, had also facts in his favor; and, moreover, the evidence of over a hundred respectable witnesses, among whom were the first names of Europe. To this there is but one answer-the magistrates dared not question the facts of mesmerism. Spirit-photography, spiritrapping, writing, moving, talking, and even spirit-materializations can be simulated; there is hardly a physical phenomenon now in Europe and America but could be imitated-with apparatus-by a clever juggler. The wonders of mesmerism and subjective phenomena alone defy tricksters, skepticism, stern science, and dishonest mediums; the cataleptic state it is impossible to feign. Spiritualists who are anxious to have their truths proclaimed and forced on science, cultivate the mesmeric phenomena. Place on the stage of Egyptian Hall a somnambulist plunged in a deep mesmeric sleep. Let her mesmerist send her freed spirit to all the places the public may suggest; test her clairvoyance and clairaudience; stick pins into any part of he: body which the mesmerist may have made his passes over; thrust needles through the skin below her eyelids; burn her flesh and lacerate it with a sharp instrument. "Du not fear!" exclaim Regazzoni and Du Potet, leste and Pierrard, Puysegur and Dolgorouky-"a mesmerized or entranced subject is never hurt!" And when all this is performed, invite any popular wizard of the day who thirsts for puffery, and is, or pretends to be, clever at mimick. ing every spiritual phenomenon, to submit his body to the same tests! In the "Bulletin de l'Academie de Medecine," Paris, 1837, vol. i, p. 343 et seq., may be found the report of Dr. Oudet, who, to ascertain the state of insensibility WISE WORDS FROM LACTANTIUS. 167 The speech of Jules Favre is reported to have lasted an hour and a half, and to have held the judges and the public spellbound by its elo quence. We who have heard Jules Favre believe it most readily; only the statement embodied in the last sentence of his argument was unfor tunately premature and erroneous at the same time. "We are in the presence of a phenomenon which science admits without attempting to explain. The public may smile at it, but our most illustrious physicians regard it with gravity. Justice can no longer ignore what science has acknowledged !" Were this sweeping declaration based upon fact and had mesmerism been impartially investigated by many instead of a few true men of science, more desirous of questioning nature than mere expediency, the public would never smile. The public is a docile and pious child, and readily goes whither the nurse leads it. It chooses its idols and fetishes, and worships them in proportion to the noise they make; and then turns round with a timid look of adulation to see whether the nurse, old Mrs. Public Opinion, is satisfied. Lactantius, the old Christian father, is said to have remarked that no skeptic in his days would have dared to maintain before a magician that the soul did not survive the body, but died together with it; "for he would refute them on the spot by calling up the souls of the dead, ren dering them visible to human eyes, and making them foretell future events."* So with the magistrates and bench in Madame Roger's case. Baron Du Potet was there, and they were afraid to see him mesmerize the somnambulist, and so force them not only to believe in the phenomenon, but to acknowledge it—which was far worse. And now to the doctrine of Paracelsus. His incomprehensible, though lively style must be read like the biblio-rolls of Ezekiel, "within and without." The peril of propounding heterodox theories was great in those days; the Church was powerful, and sorcerers were burnt by the dozens. For this reason, we find Paracelsus, Agrippa, and Eugenius Philalethes as notable for their pious declarations as they were famous for their achievements in alchemy and magic. The full views of Paracelsus on the occult properties of the magnet are explained partially in his famous book, Archidaxarum, in which he describes the wonderful tinct of a lady in a magnetic sleep, pricked her with pins, introducing a long pin in the fles up to its head, and held one of her fingers for some seconds in the flame of a candle, A cancer was extracted from the right breast of a Madame Plaintain. The operation lasted twelve minutes; during the whole time the patient talked very quietly with her mesmerizer, and never felt the slightest sensation ("Bul. de l'Acad. de Med.," Ton ii., p. 370). * Prophecy, Ancient and Modern, by A. Wilder: " Phrenological Journal." |