To the Editor:

MESMERISM.

[From the London Tablet.]

SIR-Two excellent articles on mesmerism have already appeared in the Tablet, which may serve as a prelude to the reflections on that subject which I now address to you, and which I beg you to receive favourably.

The more the public becomes interested in this novelty, the more necessary it is that it should be accurately characterized. Now, Catholic science has more light to shed upon this question than the admirers of mesmerism are aware of; for, while they confess themselves unable to do more than simply to record the existence of magnetic facts, without being able to offer any reasonable explanation of their cause, we, thank heaven, admitting these facts, are able to explain their nature and cause, their means and their end.

You, Sir, have done wisely in imposing on the amateur mesmerist the importance of prudence and caution; for, as you leave it to be inferred, the Evil Spirit may be in truth the actual operator. What you hint at under the form of a doubt, or state with some reserve, will be confirmed by the following reflections. If any thinking person should rise up against our explanation, we shall be very glad to be furnished with such an opportunity of developing the positive and certain convictions which we have upon the matter. For we feel that an explanation, taken from beyond the bounds of natural science, drawn from the spiritual order of things, must appear repugnant to many at a period like this, when men appear to explain all things without reference to God.

For a long time the known facts of mesmerism were contested, and their truth denied. This was wrong. Without a doubt, it has produced what may be called false facts: no doubt, also, things which were capable of a natural explanation have been sometimes imagined to be marvellous; but, notwithstanding this, there remain facts, constant, well proven, irrefutable; it concerns not us, then, to deny the existence of the magnetic phenomena; we must admit and consider them carefully; we must see to what order they belong, in order to discover the veritable author of them. What say the magnetizers themselves, and how do they proceed in their explanations? They all give as the efficient means, and the cause of the phenomena, those passes, which inject into the subject a certain fluid which they call magnetic. It is necessary that they should speak thus; they see nothing else; they are constrained to accept as the cause, the external forms which they have under their eyes.

But let us ask any man who has the least notion of psychology, whether there is any connection between the means employed and the effect produced? Is this pretended fluid anything more than a word, without any real meaning, offered by ignorance to fill up a void? Who has ever proved the actual presence of this fluid? and if it really exists—which we fearlessly deny what effect does it produce? This fluid, as well as the external forms which

-

are said to excite it, being a physical matter, can produce only a physical effect; that is to say, a soporific state; a natural sleep, conformable to our nature; a repose, more or less complete, of the organs, without intuition. Now it is altogether otherwise; the effect that it produces that is to say, the magnetic intuition is of a nature and of an order altogether different from the cause to which they would attribute it. The best proof, moreover, that this fluid is but a vain explanation, is that the magnetiser can act upon his subject without contact, at a considerable distance, and even without his knowledge, by the sole action of his will.

Instead of proceeding, as they do, to lay down at once as a cause, a supposition without reality, to explain with such help the effects which are manifested, it is necessary to start with the effects themselves; to judge of them in their nature; to discover the agent which has given them birth.

Now, we find an effect which is supernatural-superhuman—that is to say, the complete exercise of the functions of the understanding or the mind, independently of the assistance of those organs to which their manifestation is subjected at their creation; such an effect is not the order of human or natural things.

Bodies present no obstacle, except to the corporal senses; if, then, I see what walls or distance hide from me; If I read that which my eye cannot perceive; If I be present there where my limbs have not borne me; If I hear what my ear cannot hear, it is no longer in the human state that I am acting; it is manifest that my spirit is freed from the servitude of the body; it acts alone, without the mediation, independently of the service of my senses, beyond the limits of that order in which my place has been assigned. This visible world being, according to Scripture, but the shadow and the figure of an invisible world, I can easily conceive that the spirit set at liberty may not be stopped by this shadow. To the spirit I say, which belongs not to the visible world, although it may be united with it, neither bodies nor distance may present obstacles, if any competent power shall have disengaged it for a moment from its slavery to the senses,

But this state is not of the human order for a reason which we may not dare to state before the Church shall have explicitly declared it; the spirit has been placed by the Creator in this corporal shadow, and it must depend upon it for all its functions, with the exception of thought; although it may govern the shadow as its master. When he acts alone, without the mediation of the senses, like a pure spirit, he employs only the single organ of speech, to manifest to the witnesses of the phenomenon the functions that it fills; he is even by that act momentaneously in an exceptional condition, different from that of his union with a body, the ministry of which is necessary for him to exercise the same functions in the condition of humanity. This explains, also, why it is that the somnambule, when awakened, knows nothing himself of what the witnesses have learned from him. As man, he knows nothing; because he

has not acted in the order of humanity. He is ignorant of what his mind has done, because his organs have not lent it any ministry. He, an organized being, knows only such things as his organs bear him witness of

An exceptional condition, the momentary freedom from the slavery of the senses: such is the phenomenon produced in mesmerism. This it is that must be established, that we may know to what order, natural or supernatural, the phenomenon belongs.

Can such a change in the human condition be attributed to any passes, to fluids, to the will of the mangnetiser ? Evidently not. The passes are a vain form, without effect; calculated to conceal the true efficient cause; the operators often neglect them; the fluid is a supposition without reality; and, if it existed even, it could produce no effect but one like itself, natural. The will is no stranger to the production of the phenomena; it is, indeed, the means; but it is not the author. The will is a command issued by one intelligence to another intelligence; if it obeys, and obeys in spite of itself, in an order in which man has no power, we must needs acknowledge that it yields to a superhuman power. But beyond man, and all that belongs to his domain, there is only spiritual power. Yes, it is in the spiritual order that we must seek for the actual operator of the magnetic phenomena, since he cannot be found below.

But here two authors present themselves, God and God's enemy; for this enemy, that Jesus Christ calls King and Prince of the World, although he be not absolute master in his own house, although his power is subordinate to the Divine permission, possesses nevertheless all the power over spirits which is necessary to work out "the mystery of iniquity" of which the Scriptures speak.

From which of these two powers do the phenomena of magnetism spring? Is it God or the Demon that produces them? Do they belong to the mystery of salvation, or the mystery of iniquity that the Demon pursues. This question is to be solved by an examination of mesmerism in its instruments, and in the facts that it produces; it is a tree to be judged by the fruit it bears.

Now, who will affirm that the instruments of mesmerism and the fruits it bears are such as to induce us to attribute to God phenomena that He nevertheless permits. No subject has ever been cited who is, in the opinion of the witnesses, a person living a life of grace, nor an operator who is reputed holy, or bearing the fruits of faith, virtue, or holiness. The portrait which the angel of Tobias gives of those over whom the Demon has power might well find its place, and apply, in greater number of cases, to the subject as well as to the operator. This opinion may give pain, but it cannot be overthrown by mere negations or denials. But let us add that there in no necessity that there should exist, either on the one part or the other, any explicit agreement or contract with the Spirit of Darkness. For many have tried to produce the magnetic sleep without ever succeeding, and those who have succeeded know

not why or how; they themselves are more astonished at their own success than any one else. Many subjects have wished to experience this sleep, without the power; others have experienced it without the wish to do so; and all equally without understanding any thing about it. The subject and the operator, therefore, may be perfectly ignorant what the power is that acts through them, without their knowledge: they may not have any evil intention in acting, but they know not of what spirit they are. It is enough that their hearts range them under the influence of the Holy Ghost.

Of what value are the fruits, the facts of the subject, in the magnetic sleep? They are all connected with the present and material life, with the physical world the indication of a place, of an event, of the cause of a disease - they do not go beyond the limits of the earth. They concern the present, the past, but never the future, at least, if the future fact has not received a beginning of existence, which renders it already visible in the principle, in the mind which conceived it, or in the fixed determination of him who willed it.

To what profit does mesmerism tend? It is for the operator a speculation; for the subject a matter of curiosity, or of gain, if he make a trade of it; for the witnesses an amusement; for human pride an aliment; for incredulity a reply to the mysteries of religion; a means of reducing to the rank of natural facts the Gospel miracles; a motive for throwing into doubt all religious verities by the supposition that some day all will be explained naturally. Behold its fruits! Some may grow from it more manifestly evil, but these we will pass over in silence. To what spiritual principle do such fruits belong? What say you of the tree? There is nothing for the mystery of salvation; and the problematical cures which are attributed to magnetism will not change in any degree the judgment which we here deliver.

We might go to state why all men cannot magnetise; why everybody is not a subject; why so few are found of an easy dependence on the will of the operator. These questions concern the composition of men, the hierarchy of spirits; questions too vast for this article, and which perhaps would be premature at present. Let us rather, for the present, state why magnetism has displayed itself in our time and to what end.

Incontestably it is an extraordinary instrument, and for an exciting motive, must have extraordinary things to combat. For, we know the history of the past attests it-that there has never been attempted a single important work for the salvation of the world which has not had its counterpart for per. dition. Hell has opposed the Holy Spirit, its Spirit of Error; to the Gospel, its Gospel of Heresy; to the Apostolate, its Apostolate; to the miracles, its illusions. It has, like the Church of Jesus Christ, its Apostles, its doctors, its prophets, its pastors, its doctrine, its devotees, and even its heroes of crime and impiety. In a word, the mystery of iniquity always goes on, side by side, with the mystery of salvation. He, whom Jesus Christ calls the king of this world, disputes the world with him, foot to foot; apes his works, and opposes

means to means. This is a spectacle which should be closely observed; it is the key of the history of times; the explanation of this incessant struggle of good and evil on the earth.

What, then, is the special character of our epoch? what is now passing on the scene which necessitates, on the part of the enemy, the employment of a means so novel? Two things, which are very remarkable, but not sufficiently remarked.

1. Materialism has had its day; it is past, it is conquered. Spiritualism springs up on all sides: but if the world no longer assert that all dies with men; if it perceive that there is no tomb for the spirit, the consequence of this truth will lead it into the way of faith, if the enemy do not hasten to obscure the entrance. The existence of God is confessed; and behold, Pantheism immediately starts up, and, to confuse the idea, makes a God of every being in creation. The existence of a spirit in man is confessed; mesmerism itself becomes proof of it; it banishes materialism; but mark the counterpart. In giving materialism its death-blow, mark whither mesmerism conducts man; astonishing by its phenomena, it prevents his comprehending anything; to hesitate about all religious truths; to believe nothing firmly. Thus, thanks to this instrument, the former incredulity falls only to give place to an uncertainty of the mind more fatal than the preceding state. Study and reflection will, no doubt, execute justice on this illusion, but who is brought to reflect in the midst of the rapid industrial movement which now absorbs all thoughts? 2. The second service which mesmerism renders is this: Apart from this struggle of spiritualism against materialism, it spreads its veil over a great number of points, facts of spirituality, divine ecstacy, revelation, a very elevated education, all which it concerned the enemy to paralyse by analogous facts. In the hundred different ways which heaven employs in rousing men, whom it exalts even to itself; whom it illumines with its own light; it gives to some the voice of propitiation, to others the miraculous stigmata of the wounds of our Savionr; it dictates to others its prophetic wishes; extraordinary helps for extraordinary times!

Hundreds of thousands of witnesses have seen these prodigies have published them; millions of souls owe their conversion to these miracles, yet they are, as it were, unknown; forgetfulness, pre-occupation, and doubt, paralyse them. In many places, the courts of justice have done to Government the service to imprison the important voices or the oracles; but nothing has been more efficacious against such facts of spirituality than the species of imitation of them which mesmerism supplies, by opposing spiritualism to spirituality; magnetic intuition to the ecstatic vision; prodigy to prodigy; or phenomenon to miracle, and thus deceiving even souls of good will.

These magnetic phenomena astonish, cause men to suspect the yet unknown secrets of nature, the properties of the human spirit, which, they say, science will sooner or later explain. Then they assimilate to these phenomena the