much excited, and sets up a shout over the solution of a difficulty, or the detection of a fraud, and glorifies it as a triumph over superstition, we may suspect-we must not set it down for certain, but we may, I say, suspect-that he is not only glad to get rid of something which he did not wish to believe, but that he means directly to impugn something else, which he cannot contrive to disbelieve. The panic haste in which a vulgar dread of being thought superstitious, or being driven to believe something disagreeable, call on science and philosophy to come to the rescue -the prostration in which frightened ignorance waits to receive the lesson which it is to turn into nonsense by parrot repetition -the silent awe with which it listens to "profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science, falsely so-called-all this is miserably ridiculous. It is something which cannot be esti mated, or even imagined by those who, without taking the trouble to look into facts, and to use the common sense which God has given them, are content to sit down, calm and silent, under the shameful conviction that they are not scientific, and must not pretend to have an opinion, but must just swallow whatever pretenders in philosophy may condescend to tell them."

Equally excellent is what Dr. Maitland says of credulity; namely, that to believe human testimony is as much a part of our nature as to require food; and that the very men who affect to believe as little as possible, go on for threescore years and ten, believing from hour to hour, and from year to year, what people tell them, on testimony which they cannot have tested, and which, had they a motive for it, they would reject on mere hearsay.

I trust this journal will do much to set the world right on these questions. That it will teach people that all attacks on faith under the pseudonym of credulity, do not indicate a philosophical but a shallow mind, incapable, or unwilling to determine the true limits of evidence, and to give a rational concession to the powers of the unsophisticated human mind. That so far from regarding the dicta of mere scientific or literary men on questions of a higher nature then mere physics as decisive, the deplorable blunders and pitiable weaknesses of such men as Faraday, Brewster, Dickens, Dr. Elliotson-the Martyr of Mesmerism turned persecutor of Spiritualism, will do much to cure implicit reliance on men wandering out of their proper provinces. That they will come to regard such men with all honour and respect, as far as they confine themselves to what they have really studied, but at the same time, to regard them as men suffering under the chronic paralysis of faith left on Europe by the French Revolution. That, in fact, all that part of their minds which regards the science of pneumatology is dead, and incapable of any vital process. That, so far as they are concerned, all further

discoveries in the region of our more subtle life and essence is at an end. They must be suffered to die out, as the dried-up stalks and stubble of a past season, and the energies of a new and more equally developed order of minds must be relied on for the prosecution of knowledge more important than even railroads and telegraphs, because embracing the eternities of nature and destiny. Instead of allowing faith to be trodden under foot, under the nickname of credulity, men will become conscious of its truly august character, of its gospel greatness. At the same time that they are careful whilst fixing their eyes on the fair mountains of speculation in the distance, they will be careful to follow the highways of evidence, as they proceed. In such minds, nicknames will cease to possess any influence. To call spirit-enquiries spirit-rapping, will not be regarded as wit, much less as argument, any more than it would be deemed clever to call Christians water-dippers, because they practise baptism. Yet there is a large class of the vulgar who, when they have pronounced the word spirit-rapping, think they have exploded spirit-evidence. These are "of the earth, earthy!" animal existences, in the words of John Keats

Which graze the mountain-tops with faces prone.

In the meantime, let us say with Jung Stilling in his Scenen mus dem Geister-Reiche :—"Ob uns für Narren und Obscuranten erklärt, oder für verrückte Schwärmer hält, das ist ganz einerley: dafür wurde unser Herr und Meister selber gehalten. Lasst uns zu Ihm hinaus gehen, und seine Schmach tragen!" That is, "Whether we are reckoned fools and ignoramuses, or set down as mad fanatics, it is all one: our Lord and Master himself was pronounced such. Let us go out to him, and bear his shame!"

CLAIRVOYANCE AS A MEANS OF CURE.

WITH CASES.

ANCIENT philosophy recognised a reciprocal influence among all entities; between the earth and all the naturally-formed things and beings on it, and between these and the sun, moon, planets, stars-the visible bodies of the macrocosm.

But ancient philosophy also included among entities, invisible or spiritual beings, under various names, to whom it accorded a greater or less influence among the entities of the earth.

The foundations of this philosophy were laid by seers, prophets, oracles-those who were pre-eminently subjects of the "divine sleep "—the trance.

Upon the breaking up of ancient civilization this philosophy disappeared, except so much as was, in its spiritual part, purified and saved in the Christian religion, and as was, in its scientific part, fragmentarily caught up by students of natural philosophy, of whom we have examples in the greater or lesser lights of the "dark ages," and-approaching modern days-in Paracelsus, Van Helmont, Bacon, and others.

In the early Christian church the influence and action of spiritual beings, for the purposes of health, were as much acknowledged by worshippers as in the temples of their progenitors. And this acknowledgment is still made by some sects of the church. But when literary Europe accepted the canons of criticism laid down by Hume and Voltaire, all this was gradually set down as แ byegone superstition," and it was held that everything not sensuously present was-in all future time-to be treated as nonexistent.

Literature and criticism were in this state when Mesmer, upon whom Van Helmont's mantle had indirectly fallen, revived a part of the old philosophy-the reciprocal influence of all visible entities. He demonstrated that a correspondent property to that of polarity and inclination in the loadstone was possessed by man and other beings. To this magnetism he applied the term animal-to distinguish it, in use, from the mineral kind. Tracing disturbance of health, in many cases, to disturbance of magnetic polarity, he and his followers showed that by restoring normal polarity health might frequently be restored.

Overcome by the force of facts which are publicly recognized, the literary world is gradually extending its tolerance to animal magnetism, under its name of mesmerism. It should hasten and accept it thoroughly, for to-morrow it will have to tolerate a higher department of the same subject,-spiritual magnetism;— for this, in some divine order of Providence, begins to be recog nized by similar simple ones who kept their eyes open to the facts of animal magnetism.

It was observed by those who treated patients by mesmerism, that they sometimes passed into a new state. Of this state a special study was made. It was found to be divisible into various degrees. In the first degree the channels by which the soul communicates with the external are still half open; the subject seems to be in a kind of Reverie. The next degree is that of Halfsleep; in it the eyes are closed, but the other senses are not entirely so. The third is that of Magnetic Sleep or Coma, in which the patient is as if stupefied, but still retains the recollection of sensuous life. The fourth is distinguishable from the preceding by consciousness-this is Sleep-waking. The fifth is that of Introvision; in which the patient perceives his interior state,

diagnoses his complaint, and indicates remedies. In the sixth the patient passes the bounds of corporeity and enters into rapport with other objects and individualities, near and remote in space and time. This is properly called Clairvoyance. The seventh is, when well marked, that of Extasis, or Trance, from transitus anime-the passing of the soul through the veil of sense.

The nerve-organism of the human being, taken as a whole, is bipolar-the brain-system representing one pole, the ganglionic the other. The two systems being interlaced by reciprocating nerve-chords and nerve-plexuses into one system. In our ordinary day-life the brain-system is positive, and the ganglionic negative. In our ordinary night-life the ganglionic system is positive, and the brain-system negative. The brain-system is the focal apparatus of sensation and will. The ganglionic that of intuition, instinct, and sympathy. Facts demonstrate that these apparatus are the immediate concrete instruments of the soul, by which it has polar organic relations with the material sphere; and thus on the natural plane is made to move spiritual man, who -through the soul-has polar relations also with the spiritual sphere, as manifested in the phenomena of clairvoyance and trance.

In clairvoyance, and in trance especially, we witness a passing from activity on the external plane of conscious being to that on an internal; in other words, the essential being is polarized from the natural to the spiritual plane: the vito-magnetic currents ceasing, more or less, to circulate through the external nerves, few impressions, or none, are transmitted from without to the brain, but to the organic seat of instinct and intuition: in most subjects the perceptive faculty is intensified, and there is with clearsight of mundane individualities, spiritual clairvoyance, and perhaps clairaudience. The degree of change thus effected by this spiritual polarization is determined by the idiosyncrasy of the subject; but that, together with the will of the operator, and circumstantial conditions, have also to be taken into account. Under some operators, subjects will exhibit only the phenomena of mundane clairvoyance, while under others they will seem to exhibit the illumination of ancient seership.

This change in the direction of the vito-magnetic forces of the soul may be induced in sensitive subjects, not only by the magnetic process, but also by the day's exhaustion of sensibility, irritability, and will; by various drugs; or, lastly, by wish or passivity, reciprocating, consciously or unconsiously, with the action of a spirit.,

For the purposes of exploring hidden states or causes of disorder, and of searching for hitherto unknown remedies in nature-the induction of the state by mesmerism is usual, and perhaps best.

Clairvoyants who perceive not only remote objects on the natural plane, and their states, but also beings and objects on the spiritual plane, may be expected to be affected by the moral states of persons, and also by the essential qualities of naturallyformed things. Every object of the external world-as ancient philosophers taught whether earth or metal, vegetable or animal, including the human, has its monadial or soul-substance perceptible to a correspondent faculty of the human being, when in the state under view.

These monadial or soul-substances-otherwise called vital, sympathial, aural, aromal, essential-have magnetic, or polar, relations with every other, constituting the bases of sympathy or antipathy. Clairvoyants perceive the vapours, rays, or lines of some concordantly intersecting or blending with each other, while they perceive others, on the contrary, correspondingly repelling. They perceive, further, that each organ of the body has its proper magnetism, and that in the infinitude of natural things there are those which have a magnetism in correspondence with the magnetism of one or other organ.

Human magnetism blends with that of water, producing & resultant of definite activity. Its blending with that of simple drugs explains the activity of the preparations used in homœopathy, inert except where there is polar reactivity to their action.

The human being-the ultimate of Nature, the microcosm, the universe in small-has, we learn, combined in him the elements of the macrocosm-the universe; all monadial qualities and forces, all loves and wills-chemical, vegetable, animal-are in him epitomised: he has thus, in his physical organism, rapport or relation with every being and object in visible nature; and, in the constitution of his soul-with the beings and objects of the invisible world, even, as we are also divinely assured, unto the Father and Author of All.

CASES.

It is twenty years ago that I was invited to be present at a visit to a patient of Dr. Elliotson's, Miss Emma Melhuish. Her disease was epilepsy of the gravest character. Her case had been given up as hopeless by two of the most eminent physicians of the metropolis: it was then undertaken by Dr. E., who confined the treatment to keeping her almost continuously in the magnetic state. She was in this state when I saw her. I heard her, in it, describe her own condition, predict the number of fits she would yet have, and when she would have the last. She prescribed medicine for herself. Dr. E. directed that her instructions should be attended to: he said that in this state patients prescribed best for themselves. Her prediction was verified to