eclipsed the judiciary astrology of Ptolemy and Pythagoras, of her experimentalism which has rendered it impossible to jugglers and sorcerers any longer to perform miracles, or of her chemistry, which has destroyed the alchemical chimera; yet what does all this signify? Every thing intrinsical is hidden from our mode of search; we are experienced only in outward qualities and accidents; sciences have superseded each other in time and locality, and we have been prone to contemn those which we could neither attain to or understand. Taken in the aggregate, the modern study of mankind has not been mán; and herein do our opinions and conclusions most widely differ from those of the Ancients with whom the NOSCE TE IPSUM regulated the thoughts and efforts of the greatest minds, all other indeed being esteemed secondary and worthless in comparison. The meagreness and insufficiency of our philosophy becomes daily more apparent, and facts press us fast onward to seek anew from nature an explanation of her marvels; it is not the superstitious alone who pervert facts to favour their prejudices: as often is sophistry found under the mask of philosophy, and nature herself warped and misrepresented to suit the individual judgments and assertions of those who discard, indeed, supernatural interposition, but to supply it with arbitrary or insufficient causation; and who though weak in faith, are sceptically credulous, and so often choose the harder side. Reason must exert herself afresh; for if she pass not quickly the barrier within which partial observation has held her, she will cease to triumph as heretofore, in many minds, over vulgar experience; we have warred long enough with internal instincts, traditions, and even with the impressions of sense when these have not fallen in with our ideas of rationality; and in very faithlessness have degraded science, and given her over to the service of those petty projects and small interests which have practical sway in this sensible world. Though the more refined operations of nature are hidden from our obtuser senses, they need not be from our understanding; we are not incapable of at least an intellectual appreciation of those finer agencies which escape common susceptibility, and are sensibly manifested only in the effects. Influences, however apparently subtle, are only so relatively to less refined subjects; for things are affected by their similars; that which is gross affects outward sense, that which is mental, cerebral sense; and so on even to the finest projections of reason towards Intelligibles; by which we are mentally carried back to the superstantial in all things. The less grossly palpable any body is, the more simple and essentially potent does it become. "Maxima de nihili visitu fulgura fiunt." All observation, in short, tends to refine our notions, not only of causal being, but of its unfolding into physical action; passing the disputed question of the materiality of mind or powers of thinking, we are led to speculation on the essentiality of thought itself; from conjectures concerning the natural generation and mechanical suggestion of ideas in the brain, to their fixed entity, actual emanation, and constant transmission to distant objects. "Illis viva acies, nec pupula parva, sed ignis, All perceptions perhaps require to be experienced in some degree before their idea can be truly conveyed, or their verbal expression become quite intelligible; but once forced by observation beyond the limits of ordinary experience, it matters little how far; as whatever phenomena present themselves, inscrutable though they be by present knowledge, we are assured they do not transgress the order of nature. Have we not facts of transportive imagination enough to satisfy the boldest poetic fancy, or the ardent eloquence that long since declared that man contains within him all the powers of nature; from his being, as a centre, bearing relation to the whole, the universe is reflected in his little world. The multitude, unpractised in matters of subtle reasoning and speculation, are incapable of perceiving aright any thing except as it outwardly affects them; in practical appliances they always go astray, in default of the first movement of the leading few; the pioneers are the responsible conductors of the march; and the early enlightened advocates of Mesmerism may, all more or less if they be active and earnest, image out into its general application the good which each individually desires. The power of the operator's will in changing the dispositions and habits of the sleepwaker, (though for reasons above offered, very dangerous ground for experiment), cannot, as a fact, be too well noted; it is a true, though feeble and partial type of the renovating power of that all-pervading, educating, disciplining, purifying, Vital Spirit, which in former ages of the world was dignified with the name of Wisdom; and of whose concentrated power all our external efforts for progress and amendment are but the dead and comparatively ineffective shadows. 66 Sed fortasse aliquis quærit, sapientia quid sit, Scandit, et etheriâ cum diis versatur in aulâ, Omnia despiciens prorsus mortalia tanquam Frivola, et assiduè tendens velut ignis in altum." Such," says M. Gauthier, speaking on this point, "such are the unheard of benefits of magnetism, that faults which were excessively prominent previous to the somnambulic state, no longer existed in the awakened patient.”* For such observations as these the science of phrenology may be available; as, if the intention gradually works itself into manifestation through the organism, as might be expected, corresponding changes of development may be fairly and satisfactorily tested. Considered as a collection of inductive facts, few will probably now presume to deny the eminent usefulness and truth of phrenology; but the zeal of some of its advocates has certainly been over and above, in claiming for it exclusive authority in * See Traité Pratique du Somnambulisme. A. Gauthier. Paris, 1843. |