truth, frank exposition to congenial minds is
essential to the earnest seeker.”

“I am pleased with what you say,” said Sir
Philip, “and I shall be still more pleased to find
in you the very confidant I require. But what
was your controversy with my old friend, Dr.
Lloyd? Do I understand our host rightly, that
it related to what in Europe has of late days
obtained the name of mesmerism?”

I had conceived a strong desire to conciliate
the good opinion of a man who had treated me
with so singular and so familiar a kindness, and
it was sincerely that I expressed my regret at the
acerbity with which I had assailed Dr. Lloyd;
but of his theories and pretensions I could not
disguise my contempt. I enlarged on the
extravagant fallacies involved in a fabulous
“clairvoyance,” which always failed when put to plain test
by sober-minded examiners. I did not deny the
effects of imagination on certain nervous
constitutions. ‘Mesmerism could cure nobody;
credulity could cure many. There was the well-known
story of the old woman tried as a witch; she
cured agues by a charm; she owned the impeachment,
and was ready to endure gibbet or stake
for the truth of her talisman; more than a
mesmerist would for the truth of his passes! And
the charm was a scroll of gibberish sewn in an
old bag and given to the woman in a freak by the
judge himself when a young scamp on the
circuit. But the charm cured? Certainly; just as
mesmerism cures. Fools believed in it. Faith,
that moves mountains, may well cure agues.’

Thus I ran on, supporting my views with
anecdotes and facts, to which Sir Philip listened with
placid gravity.

When I had come to an end, he said, “Of
mesmerism, as practised in Europe, I know nothing,
except by report. I can well understand that
medical men may hesitate to admit it amongst
the legitimate resources of orthodox pathology;
because, as I gather from what you and others
say of its practice, it must, at the best, be
far too uncertain in its application to satisfy
the requirements of science. Yet an examination
of its pretensions may enable you to
perceive the truth that lies hid in the powers
ascribed to witchcraft; benevolence is but a
weak agency compared to malignity; magnetism
perverted to evil may solve half the riddles of
sorcery. On this, however, I say no more at present.
But as to that which you appear to reject as
the most preposterous and incredible pretension of
the mesmerists, and which you designate by the
word ‘clairvoyance,’ it is clear to me that you
have never yourself witnessed even those very
imperfect exhibitions which you decide at once
to be imposture. I say imperfect, because it is
only a limited number of persons whom the eye or
the passes of the mesmerist can affect, and by such
means, unaided by other means, it is rarely indeed
that the magnetic sleep advances beyond the first
vague, shadowy twilight dawn of that condition
to which only in its fuller developments I would
apply the name of ‘trance.’ But still trance is
as essential a condition of being as sleep or as
waking, having privileges peculiar to itself. By
means within the range of the science that
exolores its nature and its laws, trance, unlike the
clairvoyance you describe, is producible in every
human being, however unimpressible to mere
mesmerism.”

“Producible in every human being! Pardon
me if I say that I will give any enchanter his
own terms who will produce that effect upon
me.”

“Will you? You consent to have the experiment
tried on yourself?”

“Consent most readily.”

“I will remember that promise. But to
return to the subject. By the word trance I do
not mean exclusively the spiritual trance of the
Alexandrian Platonists. There is one kind of
trance,—that to which all human beings are
susceptible,—in which the soul has no share; for
of this kind of trance, and it was of this I spoke,
some of the inferior animals are susceptible;
and, therefore, trance is no more a proof of soul
than is the clairvoyance of the mesmerists, or
the dream of our ordinary sleep, which last has
been called a proof of soul, though any man who
has kept a dog must have observed that dogs
dream as vividly as we do. But in this trance
there is an extraordinary cerebral activity—a
projectile force given to the mind—distinct from
the soul,—by which it sends forth its own emanations
to a distance in spite of material obstacles,
just as a flower, in an altered condition of atmosphere,
sends forth the particles of its aroma. This
should not surprise you. Your thought travels
over land and sea in your waking state; thought,
too, can travel in trance, and in trance may
acquire an intensified force. There is, however,
another kind of trance which is truly called spiritual,
a trance much more rare, and in which the soul
entirely supersedes the mere action of the mind.”

“Stay,” said I; “you speak of the soul as
something distinct from the mind. What the
soul may be I cannot pretend to conjecture. But
I cannot separate it from the intelligence!”

“Can you not! A blow on the brain can destroy
the intelligence; do you think it can destroy
the soul? It is recorded of Newton that in the
decline of his life his mind had so worn out its
functions that his own theorems had become to
him unintelligible. Can you suppose that Newton’s
soul was as worn out as his mind? If you
cannot distinguish mind from soul, I know not
by what rational inductions you arrive at the
conclusion that the soul is imperishable.”

I remained silent. Sir Philip fixed on me his
dark eyes quietly and searchingly, and after a
short pause, said:

“Almost every known body in nature is
susceptible of three several states of existence—the
solid, the liquid, the aëriform. These conditions
depend on the quantity of heat they contain.
The same object at one moment may be
liquid; at the next moment, solid; at the next,
aëriform. The water that flows before your gaze