hended in their full force by those who have patiently and thoroughly investigated the nervous traits and hereditary tendencies of persons of this class. A case which I have recently investigated will exhibit the whole group of facts in such a manner as to indieate their relation to each other. Sophia H—, twenty-one years of age, has been subject to paroxysms of clairvoyance for five years. She is a native of Boston, of cerebrovital temperament, the sensuous predominating over the intellectual, and in apparently good health. "Your theory, Fairfield," said a medical man, who is a little inclined to the doctrines of spiritualism," breaks down in the case of Miss H—. She is in perfect physical health." Having been introduced, Miss Hwas so kind as to submit to any tests I might select, and to answer any questions I wished to ask. I accordingly provided myself with an assortment of drugs of various tastes, ranging from the intolerably bitter and acid to the exceedingly sweet and aromatic, taking the precaution to procure them in the form of sugar-coated pellets. The induced clairvoyance having supervened with the slight shiver usual in such cases, I requested that the eyes of Miss H― should be bandaged with a heavy black-silk scarf, personally supervising the operation. I then requested the attendant to sit in an adjoining room, where he could see me, but not Miss H-; and, seating myself about six feet from the medium, I commenced the experiments by putting a pellet of quinine in my mouth. For half a minute the expression on the face of Miss Hwas one of exceeding satisfaction; but the instant the sugar was dissolved, and the quinine commenced to affect the taste-buds, the satisfaction vanished, and, although I did not move a muscle in indication of the disagreeable sensation, she began to expectorate spasmodically and violently, as if trying to expel something from her mouth. I continued the experiments with pellets of asafoetida and other sugar-coated preparations, with the result of convincing myself that the series of sensations experienced by me was actually reproduced seriatim on the tongue of the patient. I then directed my mind to the table in my own room, and asked the medium to describe it in detail, which she did, specifying one jar of alcohol as containing the brain and spinal column of a cat; another as filled with yellow liquid, and containing the brain of a mouse and that of a fish; and a third as being half-full of bugs and flies. She then described my Quekett microscope and the mahogany box in which it was kept; went on to tell me about my dissecting-lens and how it was arranged (the instrument is one of very peculiar pattern, especially adapted to insect-dissection); enumerated the titles of books lying on the table, among them a work on comparative anatomy and one of Huxley's recent publications; and, after specifying various glasses and minor instruments lying in a green box (which I had forgotten about), finally concluded by describing a condensinglens, and telling me what it was for, adding that I often used it in dissecting mice, which was the fact. The séance occupied half an hour, perhaps. At subsequent séances she exhibited the same singular accuracy as to

mental impressions that had previously passed through my own mind, but was perfectly incapable of going beyond them.

Now for the sequel. On careful inquiry, Miss H confessed that her attacks of clairvoyance were at first heralded by almost unendurable neuralgia, with pains shooting from the back of the neck upward and forward, and that these paroxysms still occasionally occurred. Her brother, Charles H, eighteen years of age, and of vital temperament, has been for several years under treatment for spinal epilepsy, and her father was a pronounced epileptic. An elder brother, thirty-seven years of age, is subject to paroxysms of neuralgia very similar to those in which the career of Miss H- commenced. In a word, not to amplify tediously, the epileptic predisposition is strongly marked in every member of the family-an inherited nervous taint, showing itself in the younger son in its most pronounced form, and in the instance of the medium herself in a lar vated form, without perceptible convulsions. All three have, at different periods, been subject to attacks of somnambulism; and yet, judging from superficial data, they are of robust constitution and in full health.

The case of the Eddy brothers, whose séances were noticed in my recent article, furnishes another illustration of the same state of facts. The father was a Methodist exhorter of the most emotional type. The mother was a compound of religious enthusiast and fortune-teller. The maternal ancestry was actively concerned in the ancient manifestations at Salem. The two young

er brothers, mediums, have always been subject to what the neighbors style "queer spells," and the father had fits. The elder brother is a Swedenborgian minister—that is to say, holds tenets peculiarly akin to the doctrines of spiritualism. I investigated the case in October last, some weeks after the work on spiritualism had been submitted, and consequently was not able to include the data in the forthcoming work-a thing to be the more regretted because the facts are typically illustrative of the correlation that subsists between epilepsy and the paroxysms of the spiritual medium. Into the laws that govern this correlation I will not now inquire, as I have had my opportunity on that question. Physiologists cannot tell why it is that a tomcat with blue eyes is always deaf, nor why gout is correlated with psoriasis. The facts are matters of observation, for which, in the present state of physiological science, no rational explanation can be assigned; but they are none the less facts of frequent occurrence, and of unquestionable validity. Again, in the phenomena of spiritualism, whoever will take the trouble to investigate the nervous states and hereditary predisposition of one medium after another, until he has exhausted the list of available candidates, will find that the phenomena are so constantly associated with the epileptic neurosis as to be justly classifiable with the symptoms of that special type of nervous degeneration. Such being the case, clairvoyance and trance must be considered simply as the psychical exponents of certain morbid states of the tissues of the brain-very strange

in some of their aspects, but to be viewed with apprehension and corrected by medical treatment, if possible, not exhibited to gratify the morbid curiosity of such as are always hunting for miracles and mysteries.*

One or two points in reference to both these cases should be noted, in order that their bearing may be fairly appreciated. In each family the elder brother, who may be fairly presumed to have been the product of the highest physical vigor of the parents, partially escapes the taint, which appears in the elder Eddy only as intellectual predisposition, and in the elder H— as a tendency to vertigo. Again, of the two Eddy boys, who are mediums, the elder and stronger, a man of vital temperament, and about thirty years of age, produces the materializing phenomena, while the younger and punier of them is a trance-medium. I speak conventionally when I talk of the phenomena produced by these mediums; for, having made it a rule not to trouble myself with investigating public séances where the probabilities are that all the necessary facilities for optical deception have been prearranged, I did not apply any tests whatever, and limited my inquiries to the detection and description of the epileptic predisposition. And if any reader should say that it is impossible for a

*What is styled credulity has its physiological basis, in the majority of instances, so far as I have observed, either in the existence of peculiar nervous experiences or in a predisposition that renders them possible. In the course of my intimacies with students, and with highly-cultivated persons, who were incapable of credulity in the ordinary acceptation of the term, I have frequently observed the phenomenon of an inherited predisposition battling for existence with the rational intellect, on occasions when the nervous system was laboring under excessive exhaustion. At such times, or in periods of great nervous tension, inherited superstitions very frequently assert themselves spontaneously, with something of their original force, even with persons. of the highest intellectual culture. A man who has had trance-experiences at a period of nervous debility, or under the influence of an anesthetic agent, knows experientially that such experiences are real, and that they bring with them a train of very singular and inexplicable psychical impressions. In good health he may have no interest in such things, except to say truthfully that they may occur, and to concede their existence as strange psychological facts-morbid but real products. On the other hand, in a very large class of persons, who, owing to favorable conditions in life, know nothing of these phenomena experientially, the predisposition exists, and shows itself in what is generally termed credulity-that is to say, in a tendency to accept and dwell lovingly upon the marvelous. In resolving this problem, it is worth the while to remember that all our psychical possibilities are potential in the nervous system, and that, comparatively speaking, these possibilities vary exceedingly in different individuals, are partly hereditary, partly acquired, and result in that variety of intellectual biases that contact with men continually illustrates. The point I wish to impress particularly, however, is that the ten

dency to believe in strange psychic phenomena is generally the intellectual representative of an inherent but often latent possibility of experiencing them. Dr. Maudsley styles this latent neurosis. For example: the possibility of experiencing a

premonitory dream must exist in the nervous or

ganism before a person can concede the reality of such a phenomenon. In other words, strange beliefs are the exponents of exceptional nervous susceptibilities. Good physical conditions, not rational analysis, have been mainly instrumental in diminishing the popular interest in exceptional psychic facts.

person to be indifferent as to the question whether the phenomena produced by the elder Eddy are genuine or spurious, I have simply to answer that I had previously witnessed similar phenomena in my own room, under conditions of test prescribed by myself, and that the important point with me was to verify the epileptic predisposition in as many instances of spiritual mediums as I could possibly or conveniently observe. Thus, having verified the materializing phenomena in several instances, and knowing, as a scientific verity, that they may occur, although I have an exceeding interest in the nervous traits and predispositions of a medium who can produce them, I am neither startled nor curious as to the feats themselves. From the scientific aspect, they are the least important phenomena of spiritualism startling, astonishing, adapted to captivate the popular imagination, and to the production of sensational reports in the newspapers; but mere nervous tours de force that no man cares to witness after he has once decided whether they are real occurrences or not. Of course, after witnessing phenomena of this type, and while reviewing one's mental memoranda of them, the question always comes up whether they may not have been mere phantasms, optical illusions, reflex spectra, or something of such nature. For myself, I will say that I have lived in the world thirty-five years, and that, both as respects vision and hearing, I have always been noted for accuracy and delicacy of perception, and for mathematical distinctness of impression as to objects cognizable by the senses. A delusive sensation is something unknown to me. I have been, at various periods, subject to presentimental dreams and to waking premonitions, but, except in nervous fever, or under anesthesia, the nervous state known as clairvoyance is not within the circle of my experiences. As to impunity from what is generally styled nervousness, I could, I think, shake hands with a ghost at midnight without the slightest tremor, the fact being that I am so indifferent and unsympathetic in these matters that I am often ashamed of my own apathy when in conversation with persons of more enthu siastic temperament. The source of this indifference lies, no doubt, in the fact that I have an abiding and unfashionable sympathy with those higher spiritual forces and those higher aspects of spiritual culture that give religion its vitality and its historical value and significance, and that, in view of the latter, with their deep but silent influence in redeeming human life to the higher good and the higher beautiful, the phenomena of spiritualism seem to me but morbid and fantastic mockeries of the really spiritualizing and ennobling. I have, hence, a peculiar immunity as respects illusion in regard to these phenomena, because of a thorough contempt for the moral and intellectual attitude of persons who can pass their lives in practising them. The investigation of them, indeed, has been with me but one of the minor aspects of a comprehensive series, with a view to unfold and demonstrate the scientific basis of religion. But I must frankly own, nevertheless, that the phenomena are in many cases real and genuine, and that, as

:

This one warning let me give to amateur investigators unless you are thoroughly trained to habits of exact scientific investigation, and have passed patient years in the practical study of the anatomy, histology, functions, and forces of the nervous system, relegate this field of inquiry to men who make a specialty of neurological studies. If you have had such a training, and can unravel the details of a nervous organism, centre by centre, then, as a preliminary step, visit insane asylums and hospitals and prisons, and make yourself familiar from life with all the shades and varieties of morbid nervous phenomena. As an initial memorandum, you will find that, in insane asylums, along with every species of hallucination and delusion, the vision of spirits of the dead and the periodical paroxysm of clairvoyance are of constant occurrence. I have seldom observed an insane patient carefully through any number of paroxysms without finding that the fit was either preceded or followed-generally the former-by a period of clairvoyance, during which the intelligence exhibited participated in the same preternatural aspects that are common with trance-mediums. Next, on comparing the physical symptoms that accompany the trances of spiritual mediums with the more pronounced series observed in settled insanity, the investigator will find that they are substantially identical-the exponents of what may be styled a progressive nervous dissolution. The conclusion will thus be forced upon him that the phenomena of spiritualism are symptoms of nervous perversion and degeneracy, and that the singular forces illustrated in these phenomena are the results of rapid molecular transformations of the intimate structure of the nervous centres. Lastly, in order to verify this conclusion, he will direct his inquiries especially to the nervous states and hereditary tendencies of the mediums themselves. I have no hesitation in predicting the result of such a method of investigation; for, in all the mediums that I have examined as to these points, in not a single instance have minute observation and careful inquiry failed to detect and verify the existence of the epileptic neurosis; so that, strange as the phenomena appear, when superficially examined and regarded without reference to their etiology, the moment the inquiry is directed to their causes, they resolve themselves into morbid products of nervous disturbance. On the other hand, they differ in many respects from phenomena generally classed with the products of unconscious cerebration.

I will give an instance of the latter which has just been contributed to my portfolio by Dr. S. J. Parker, of Ithaca, New York, formerly a surgeon in the United States Army. "In the great Grant advance of 1864," writes Dr. Parker, a soldier came to me while acting as surgeon at the White House on York River, with a grape-shot of two ounces in weight imbedded in his forehead. The wound and laceration were frightful. The whole forehead skull was crushed from the hair over the right ear to the hair over the left, and from just above the eyes to and into the

on.

"Although the man had walked sixteen miles after he was shot, in a military attitude, with his musket on his shoulder, he was determined to keep on walking, and I was compelled to have him thrown down and his musket taken away by force, to prevent him from continuing his monotonous military tramp. He would stop an instant, answer feebly any question put to him, then walk on. Being turned about by force, he would walk on in the new direction until he was stopped and turned again; yet taking notice of obstacles in his way, avoiding trees, fording streams of water with his usual care, and so When compelled to lie still he evinced no disposition to get up, or even to alter his position. When I compelled him to eat, he went on with the motions of eating after the food was exhausted and until I stopped him forcibly. But walking without the power to stop was the symptom that supervened whenever he was excited. He slowly and feebly answered all my questions; stated that he had no pain, did not think he was in any danger, and was not badly hurt; expressed a wish to have his wound dressed and to return to the field, but did not care particularly whether I dressed it or not; showed great muscular strength, so that it required considerable force to compel him to obey surgical orders. After he had been held fast by me and my assistants for a few minutes, he was ordered to stand and present arms. He did so very promptly, and would have died, I think, rather than stir out of his tracks, unless by some jar or concussion of the brain he was set to walking again, when off he would tramp in military style, avoiding obstacles in his way with the usual care of a conscious man."

In this instance, with the ideo-motor centres of the brain completely contused, the inquirer has a case that offers a tolerably satisfactory illustration of the kind of actions which occur in unconscious cerebration. The temporal lobes of the brain, the cerebellum or locomotive centre, the vital and spinal centres, and the centres and organs of sensation, were still intact, with the possible exception of the olfactory organism. The whole sensory and instincto - motor man was still uninjured; but his movements were purely automatic, so far as could be gathered from the symptoms.

This dramatic case (Huxley describes at length a very similar one in his 1874-paper before the British Association) indicates very minutely and distinctly the relative limits and traits of unconscious nervous action, as compared with voluntary movements. In the phenomena of spiritualism, on the other hand, the physiologist has to deal, not with extirpation of the anterior lobes (ideo-motor centres), but with the morbid function of those lobes, which are the great centres of perception, of volition, and of ideation, and in which the multifarious activities of other ganglia of the nervous system become subjects of cognition and consciousness. Clair

voyance is thus one of the results of morbid function of the perceptive centres of the human brain, while hallucination and illusion accompany morbid function of the sensory centres, and are by no means symptoms of such weighty import as their more quiet correlative. The latter often coexist with unimpaired intellectual faculties; the former, particularly in its settled stages, engenders an intellectual bias (aura), which is fatal to mental soundness, and invariably predisposes its victim to accept such tenets as the literature of spiritualism illustrates. In all my conversations with avowed spiritualists, during the last ten years, I have never committed the blunder of imagining that argument could be of any avail. To the few who were drifting in that direction, and who have expressed the fear that they should become spiritualists unless certain phenomena they had witnessed could be resolved, I have latterly ventured to suggest that the predisposition to accept these doctrines is in itself something that calls for medical treatment rather than for argument, and to the eradication of which tonics are better adapted than talking. In the sad case of Robert Dale Owen, for example, an inherited predisposition existed in the first instance. The intellectual bias that rendered him a life-long spiritualist, and partly vitiated the work of a brilliant mind, was but the natural result of this predisposition; and the insanity that has at last overtaken him can be justly viewed in no other light than as the final stage of the disorder. I had an hour's interview with Mr. Owen in the winter of 1873-'74, intending to discuss his case in connection with that of the late Judge Edmonds, and shall never forget the vivid impression I then had that the shadow of madness was already over him. It suffices to say that the impression led me to omit his name in the list of cases, and merely to allude to it elsewhere, lest some word of mine might hasten the impending destiny, and that the sad finale has justified that omission. A more terrible warning to enthusiastic spiritualists than the fate of this apostle of their doctrines could

* Two days after the above was written, the following note, on Mr. Owen's case, from the Superintendent of the Indiana State Hospital for the Insane, was placed in my hands. The practised alienist says: 64 Referring to an article in which, inferentially, the insanity of Robert Dale Owen, now in my care, is connected with the celebrated Katie King impostures, I beg leave to state, for the benefit of the many persons interested, that, while I believe the merest assumption of personal sensuous communication with spirit beings is evidence of insanity, Mr. Owen's present condition is clearly attributable to other predisposing or exciting causes than spiritualism, in any of its phases, theoretical or experimental. The whole subject of spiritualism seems, indeed, to have dropped out of Mr. Owen's thought." I have put in italics a statement of opinion as to the symptomatic value of the vision of spirits, which is almost word for word coincident with the view I have expressed in the work on spiritualism. The mere fact that spiritualism is not even alluded to in his ravings, however, by no means demonstrates the doctor's view that his speculations and investigations have had no influence in inducing them. The predisposing cause of the break-down of the nervous system was very certainly hereditary taint, and pronounced spiritualism was simply one of the stages of the disorder, but assisted to bring on the crisis.

not possibly have occurred to give point to what physiology has to say on the subject. The result is, however, by no means an isolated or even an uncommon one. The last days of many a medium have been passed in the insane hospital or in slowly-progressive idiocy.

What, then, is the last word that physiology has to say as to the phenomena and literature of spiritualism? Simply this: that the phenomena are invariably associated with the epileptic neurosis, either hereditary or acquired; that the apparently occult forces and the strange sources of intelligence often illustrated at séances are the exponents of an environing nervous influence, consequent upon degeneration of the nervous centres, and engendered in a manner analogous to the production of electricity by the decomposition of zinc in solution of nitric acid; that, finally, the predisposition to accept the doctrines and tenets of spiritualism is one of the consequences of such nervous disturbance, and should be treated as a symptom of nervous disorder, not argued with after the manner that one man argues with another on scientific questions.* These are not statements of a theory intended to explain the phenomena-that is, to tell how they are produced, as one explains the swinging of a pendulum. They are facts of observation that lay bare the causes, not of the phenomena only, but of the mental predisposition also, that has eventuated in giving spiritualism a distinctive and peculiar literature. However genuine the phenomena, and however real the superhuman intelligence exhibited by medi

The citation from Mr. Lecky, page 20 of APPLETONS' JOURNAL, July 3d, illustrates the defects of the so-called philosophical (generalizing) manner of treating these questions. It is very true, perhaps, that the phenomena of sorcery have never been disproved, but it is quite untrue that they have ceased to exist as the rationalizing process has made progress, or by specific rational action. As respects name, these phenomena have suffered many transformations from age to age, appearing now under the designation of magic, now as sorcery, now in the practices of the mystics and illuminati, now as mesmerism, finally as spiritualism. But they have been substantially the same under all their designations. The fakirs (mystics) of Hindostan and Arabia have depended upon them for ages for their influence with their respective races, and there is ground to believe that they formed the basis of the very ancient Egyptian mysteries. Salverte's history of the occult sciences shows this, I think, beyond a doubt, although he holds a different theory. The apparent death of the fakirs of the Orient has, indeed, never been equaled in the phenomena of modern spiritualism. The truth is, when the history of the Aryan races is carefully examined, it is clear that this series of phenomena has descended from the remotest ages, and that among the Greeks the mysteries unquestionably consisted mainly in their practice. It was thus, on account of the singular phenomena associated with it, that the ancients styled epilepsy the sacred madness, and it is now quite well authenticated that candidates for priests were accepted or rejected on this basis alone. That is to say, the epileptic predisposition was essential to the office, and no candidate was admitted to the study of the mysteries who was not susceptible of the paroxysm. As the conditions of living have become improved, the percentage of epileptics has diminished. This is the manner in which the progress of rationalism affects the issue and extirpates the tendency to accept marvels. Men believe in their own experiences, whether morbid or healthy, and cease to believe when the experiences cease to oc

cur.

ums, these facts are fatal to the system; for, if spiritualism means any thing to the great problems that trouble human life, it means that the persons who produce these phenomena and have this faculty of clairvoyance are persons of higher organization than their fellows, and that, in the course of progressive ages, the century will come when the development of this faculty will be general. If, then, it is a morbid product, and if mediums are persons of inferior rather than of superior organization, the system has no real basis, and its phenomena are of no interest except as data in scientific psychology. It is not incumbent on physiologists to construct a clock-work theory as to the manner in which nervous influence acts on environing objects. That will come by-and-by, perhaps, when the laws and properties of nervous influence have been more thoroughly investigated. At present it would be premature, although it might be ingenious, to attempt such an explanation in detail, and physiology has more premature theorizing to answer for already than is consistent with scientific ex

actness.

FRANCIS GERRY FAIRFIELD.

FLIRTATION.

AROSE-BUD in its first green coat,

You wrapped your shawl about your throat,

And crossed the lawn, when we went boating;
I touched the fragrance of your hand;
The fog came down and hid the land,
As white as snow, and we were floating.
Its dew envelope shut us in

A brand-new world, where never sin
Had laid on man the curse of labor;
We saw, across its purple rim,

The swords of the fiery cherubim

Flash four ways, like the angel's sabro.

And as my dreamy fancy sketched
A life on rainbow plumage stretched,

Far drifting on the clouds of even,

I touched the shy, reluctant glove;
What is it but to whisper love,

And be between the earth and heaven?

Soft fiction of the fickle mist!
The serpent, on your jeweled wrist,

Flashed venom at my disappointment;
For, like a pomegranate full of musk,
Our world brake ope its misty husk,
And spilled the spice and precious ointment.

But ever in this world of ours
Our sweetest wishes are like flowers
That lose their petal-bloom in labor;
Nor Eden's self were half so sweet
Did she not leave them incomplete,
Coquetting with the four-winged sabre.
WILL WALLACE HARNEY.