History of Mankind in all ages and all races, I find
a concurrence in certain beliefs which seems to
countenance the theory that there is in some
peculiar and rare temperaments a power over
forms of animated organisation, with which they
establish some unaccountable affinity; and even,
though much more rarely, a power over inanimate
matter. You are familiar with the theory
of Descartes, ' that those particles of the blood
which penetrate to the brain do not only serve
to nourish and sustain its substance, but to
produce there a certain very subtle Aura, or rather
a flame very vivid and pure that obtains the
name of the Animal Spirits;'* and at the close
of his great fragment upon Man, he asserts
that ' this flame is of no other nature than all
the fires which are in inanimate bodies.'* This
notion does but forestal the more recent doctrine
that electricity is more or less in all, or nearly
all, known matter. Now, whether, in the electric
fluid or some other fluid akin to it of which we
know still less, thus equally pervading all matter,
there may be a certain magnetic property more
active, more operative upon sympathy in some
human constitutions than in others, and which
can account for the mysterious power I have
spoken of, is a query I might suggest, but not,
an opinion I would hazard. For an opinion I
must have that basis of experience or authority
which I do not need when I submit a query to
the experience and authority of others. Still the
supposition conveyed in the query is so far
worthy of notice that the ecstatic temperament
(in which phrase I comprehend all constitutional
mystics) is peculiarly sensitive to electric
atmospheric influences. This is a fact which most
medical observers will have remarked in the
range of their practice. Accordingly I was
prepared to find Mr. Hare Townshend, in his
interesting work,† state that he himself was of 'the
electric temperament,' sparks flying from his
hair when combed in the dark, &c. That
accomplished writer, whose veracity no one would
impugn, affirms that ' between this electrical
endowment and whatever mesmeric properties
he might possess, there is a remarkable relationship
and parallelism. Whatever state of the
atmosphere tends to accumulate and insulate
electricity in the body, promotes equally (says
Mr. Townshend) the power and facility with
which I influence others mesmerically.' What
Mr. Townshend thus observes in himself, American
physicians and professors of chemistry
depose to have observed in those modern
magicians, the mediums of (so called) ' spirit
manifestation.' They state that all such mediums are
of the electric temperament, thus everywhere
found allied with the ecstatic, and their power
varies in proportion as the state of the atmosphere
serves to depress or augment the electricity
stored in themselves. Here, then, in the midst
of vagrant phenomena, either too hastily
dismissed as altogether the tricks of fraudful
imposture, or too credulously accepted as
supernatural portents—here, at least, in one
generalised fact, we may, perhaps, find a starting-
point, from which inductive experiment may
arrive soon, or late, at a rational theory. But,
however the power of which we are speaking
(a power accorded to special physical
temperament) may or may not be accounted for by
some patient student of nature, I am persuaded
that it is in that power we are to seek for
whatever is not wholly imposture in the
attributes assigned to magic or witchcraft. It
is well said by a writer who has gone into
the depth of these subjects, with the research
of a scholar and the science of a pathologist,
'that if magic had exclusively reposed on

* Descartes, L'Homme, vol iv., p. 345. Cousins's
Edition.

*Ibid, p. 428. † Facts on Mesmerism.