Supplemental.—Abnormal neuro-psychical relation—- Cautions necessary in receiving trance communications—Trance-visiting—Mesmerising at a distance, and by the will—Mesmeric diagnosis and treatment of disease—Prevision—Ultra-vital vision.

The principal alterations made in “the Letters” for the present edition comprise an expansion of my account of “trances of spontaneous occurrence,” and the introduction of greater precision into our elementary conceptions of the relations of the mind and nervous system.

Letters V., VI., VII., and VIII., establish that the most startling phenomena in popular superstitions, and the most wonderful performances by mesmerised persons, are but repetitions of events, the occurrence of which, as symptoms of, or as constituting, certain rare forms of nervous attacks, have been independently authenticated and put on record by physicians of credit. Letters II. and IX. exemplify the mode in which superstition has dressed up trance-phenomena; as letters III. and IV. display the contributions she has levied on sensorial illusions, the Od force, and normal exoneural psychical phenomena. Letter X. describes the method of inducing trances artificially, whereby they may be reproduced at pleasure, either in the interests of philosophical inquiry, or for important practical purposes.

I dedicate the present Letter to the reconsideration of the most knotty points already handled, and to the investigation of a few other questions, the solution of which is not less difficult.

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I. Hypothesis of an Abnormal Psychico-neural Relation as the essence of trance.—I admit that it is a very clumsy expedient to assume that the mind can, as it were, get loose in the living body, and, while remaining there in a partially new alliance, exercise some of its faculties in unaccustomed organs—which organs lose, for the same time, their normal participation in consciousness; and farther, that the mind can, partially indeed, but so completely disengage itself from the living body, that its powers of apprehension may range with what we are accustomed to consider the properties of free spirit, unlimitedly as to space and time. I adopt the hypothesis upon compulsion—that is to say, because I see no other way of accounting for the most remarkable trance-phenomena. In due time, it is to be expected that a simple inductive expression of the facts will take the place of my hypothetical explanation. But not the less may the latter, crude as it is, prove of temporary use, by bringing together in a connected view many new and diversified phenomena, and planting the subject in a position favourable for scientific scrutiny.

Let me arrange, in their most persuasive order, the facts which seem to justify the hypothesis above enunciated.

1. In many cases of waking-trance, the patient does not see with his eyes, hear with his ears, nor taste with his tongue, and the sense of touch appears to have deserted the skin. At the same time, the patient sees, hears, and tastes things applied to the pit of the stomach, or sees and hears with the back of the head, or tips of the fingers.

2. In the first imperfect trance-waking from initiatory trance, the patient’s apprehension of sensuous impressions177 often appears to have entirely deserted his own body, and to be in relation with the sentient apparatus in his mesmeriser’s frame—for, if you pull his hair, or put mustard in his mouth, he does not feel either; but he is actually alive to the sensations which these impressions excite, if the hair of the mesmeriser is pulled, or mustard placed on the mesmeriser’s tongue. The sensations excited thus in the mesmeriser, and these alone, the entranced person realizes as his own sensations.

3. About the same time, the entranced person displays no will of his own, but his voluntary muscles execute the gestures which his mesmeriser is making, even when standing behind his back. His will takes its guidance from sympathy with the exerted will of the other.

4. Presently, if his trance-faculties continue to be developed, the entranced person enters into communication with the entire mind of his mesmeriser. His apprehension seems to penetrate the brain of the latter, and is capable of reading all his thoughts.

5. In the last three steps, the apprehension of the entranced person appears to have left his own being to the extent described, and to have entered into relation with the mind or nervous system of another person. Now, if the patient become still more lucid, his apprehension seems to range abroad through space, and to identify material objects, and penetrate the minds of other human beings, at indefinite distances.

6. At length the entranced person displays the power of revealing future events—a power which, as far as it relates to things separate from his own bodily organization, or that of others, seems to me to show that his apprehension is in relation with higher spiritual natures, or with the Fountain of Truth itself.

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In the following pages I have given examples of those of the powers here attributed to very lucid clairvoyantes, which I have not previously instanced.

II. Transposition of the Senses.—No doubt these phenomena, irregular as they seem at present, follow a definite law, which has to be determined by future observations and experiments. Mr. Williamson found some of his clairvoyantes see with the back of the head, some with the side of the head—some best at seven inches, others at as many feet off. In the case which Mr. Bulteel reported to me, the lady read with her hand and fingers; even when he pressed a note against the back of her neck, she read it instantly: but in this case actual contact was necessary. In the case of a governess, artificially brought to the state of waking-trance by Mr. Williamson, the same faculty was observed. With one hand she used to hold open the book to be read, resting it against her chest, the pages being turned away from her: the contents of these she read fluently, touching the words with the forefinger of the other hand. In one very interesting case, which I witnessed here in the autumn of 1849, the young lady, clairvoyant through mesmerism, sitting in the corner of a sofa, something reclined, would have seen, had she peeped through a linear aperture between her seemingly closed eyelids, the lower half of things only. As it was, the reverse was the fact; and when we asked her what she saw, she told us the cornice and upper part of the room. Then, without saying any thing, I raised my cap upon my stick to within her declared range of trance-vision; she exclaimed, “Ah, Guilleaume Tell!” Her mother, whom she heard speak, but had not hitherto seen, in this trance, she recognised179 at once, when she stood up upon a chair. To read, in this trance, appeared a very painful effort to her; but she was certainly able to make out some words when she pressed a written paper against her forehead. It was evident that she could now visually discern things by some new faculty of apprehension localized there. To enable her to see things at a few feet distance, they had equally to be placed opposite to her forehead. In another case, in which the girl, when entranced, certainly saw with the knuckles of one hand, on smearing the back of that hand with ink, she could no longer see with it.

The above instances show how various are the features attending the transposition of one sense alone in waking trance; and they suggest a multitude of experiments. I remember, in 1838, on communicating facts of this kind to a clear-headed practical man, he raised this objection to their credibility: “If we can see without eyes, why has the Creator given us eyes!” The objection is specious enough, but it admits of an obvious answer. The state of trance is one of disease, transient and temporary; it is during its persistence only that this new power of apprehension is manifested. In our natural state, the mind is intended to operate and try experiences in subordination to matter, and through definite material organs, in which it is, in truth, imprisoned. Such is the law of our normal mortal being. Accordingly, when the trance is over, and the mind has returned to its normal relations with the body, all its trance-apprehensions are forgotten by it—they form no part of our moral life.

III. Sources of Error in the communications of entranced persons.—I put aside cases of deliberate decep180tion; but when persons are really entranced, they are liable, in various ways, to be deceived themselves, and to deceive others, as to the value of their revealments. There is often, in waking trance, a great vivacity and disposition to be communicative from the first. Those, again, who have frequently been thrown into trance, and have become familiar with their new condition, are generally anxious to shine in it, and make a display. This disposition is further heightened when the entranced person expects to be rewarded for his performance.

1. When indulging their lively fancy, they are liable to have a sort of waking dream, during which they describe imaginary scenes with the precision and minuteness of reality, and represent them as actual, passing at some place they name.

2. They are liable to recall past impressions, and to deliver bits of old conclusions for intuitions.

3. They are liable to adopt the thoughts of others who may be near them, especially those of their mesmeriser, and to deliver them as trance-revelations.

4. In one instance which came to my knowledge, a young lady, previously unacquainted with mathematics or astronomy, would, when entranced, and sitting with her mother and sister, write fluently off pages of an astronomical treatise, calculations, diagrams, and all. She averred and believed in her entranced state—for, when awake, it was all a mystery to her—that this performance was the product of an intuition. Her manuscript was afterwards found to run word for word with an article in the Encyclop?dia Britannica. That book, however, stood in the library, in a remote part of the house. She certainly had it not with her when she used to scribble its contents; nor did she remember ever having181 looked into it, awake or asleep. She said—when entranced, and this had been found out—that she believed she read the book as it stood in the library.

5. With some imperfectly lucid patients, the exercise of their new faculties appears to be fatiguing, and to call for great exertion. So they are occasionally with difficulty led to answer at all; and then when inconsiderately pressed, they are tempted to say any thing, just to be left tranquil.

It is difficult to say how the preceding sources of error are to be effectually guarded against. Possibly, by rigid training from the first, the patient might be brought to distinguish false promptings from genuine intuitions. But even the latter vary in lucidity and certainty. This admission was made to a friend of mine by M. Alexis, the celebrated Parisian clairvoyante. The reader cannot fail to be interested by the following account, given by M. Alexis when entranced, of his own powers, and their mode of operation:—

“Pour voir des objets éloignés,” observed M. Alexis, “mon ame ne se dégage pas de mon corps. C’est ma volonté qui dérige mon ame, mon esprit, sans sortir de cette chambre où je suis. Si mon ame sortit, je serais mort; c’est ma volonté. Ma volonté suffit pour anéantir pour quelque tems la matière. Ainsi quand cette volonté est en jeu, la boite matérielle de mon individu n’est plus. Les murs, l’espace, et même le tems, n’existent plus. Mais ce n’est qu’un rêve plus ou moins lucide. Quelquefois ma vue est meilleure qu’à d’autres. Ma vue n’est jamais la même. Une fois je suis disposé pour voir une sorte de choses, et une autre fois une autre sorte. En regardant votre chambre dans un quartier éloigné d’ici, je ne vois pas les rues ni les maisons intermédiaires. La182 seule chose (alors) qui est dans la pensée est la personne qui me parle. Je vois les objets d’une manière plus incomplète que par mes sens, moins sure. Il serait impossible de fair comprendre comment je vois. Plus il y a de l’attraction—plus j’éprouve de l’attraction aux objets que je veux voir, ou qui me touche—plus il y a de lumière; plus j’éprouve de répulsion, plus il y a de ténèbres.”

IV. Of the Different Qualities of Od in different individuals.—Von Reichenbach observed the Od light to have different colours under different circumstances, and that, while Od-negative produces the sensation of a draft of cool air, Od positive produces a sense as of a draft of warm air. An easy way to verify the last phenomenon is to beg some one to hold the forefinger of the right hand pointed to your left palm, at a quarter of an inch distance, and afterwards his left forefinger to your right palm, when the two sensations, and their difference, are appreciable by the majority of persons.

Persons entranced by mesmeric procedures are often keenly alive to the above impressions. They see light emanating from the finger-tips of the mesmeriser, and feel an agreeable afflatus from his manipulations. Others who approach them affect them in different ways—some not disagreeably, while others excite a chilly, shivering feeling, and the patient begs they will keep off from him.

A gentleman narrated to me the following case. He had been for months in anxious attendance upon a brother who was in very delicate health, and exquisitely sensitive to mesmerism. My friend used himself to mesmerise his brother; but he found it necessary, in order to soothe and not excite him by the passes, to cover the183 patient with a folded blanket, so as to dull the agency of his Od-emanation. There was but another person, of several who had been tried, whose hand the brother could bear at all; this was a maid-servant, who herself was highly susceptible, and became entranced. She said that she perceived, when entranced, the suitableness of her influence, and that of the brother, to the patient; and she used the singular expression, that they were nearly of a colour. She said that the patient’s Od-emanation was of a pink colour, and that the brother’s was a brick colour—a flatter, deeper, red; and she endeavoured to find some one else with the same coloured Od to suit her master.

In some experiments made at Dr. Leighton’s house in Gower Street, I remember it was distinctly proved that each of the experimenters produced different effects on the same person. The patient was one of the Okeys, of mesmeric celebrity. The party consisted of Dr. Elliotson, Mr. Wheatstone, Dr. Grant, Mr. Kiernan, and some others. Mr. Wheatstone tabulated the results. Each of us mesmerised a sovereign; and it was found that on each trial the trance-coma, which contact with the thus mesmerised gold induced, had a characteristic duration for each of us. Is it possible that each living person has his distinguishable measure of Od, either in intensity or quality?

V. The Od-Force is the usual channel of establishing mesmeric relation.—I take it for granted that the Od-force—the existence and some of the properties of which have been inductively ascertained by Von Reichenbach—is the same agent with that which Mesmer assumed to be the instrument in his operations. Then, in support184 of the above proposition, I cite two instances. Mr. Williamson, at my request, mesmerised and entranced the Rev. Mr. Fox at Weilbach, in the autumn of 1847. It was the second sitting, and Mr. Fox was beginning to pass from the initiatory stage of trance into trance half-waking. Mr. Williamson addressed him, and he returned an answer. Other parties in the room, including myself, then addressed Mr. Fox, and he seemed not to hear one of us. Then Mr. Williamson gave me his hand, and I again spoke to Mr. Fox; he then heard me, and spoke in answer. When, having left go Mr. Williamson’s hand, I spoke again to Mr. Fox, he heard me not. On my renewing contact with Mr. Williamson, Mr. Fox heard me again. He heard me as long as I was brought into relation with him, and that relation was clearly due to the establishment of an Od-current between myself and Mr. Williamson, with whom Mr. Fox was already in trance-relation. Every one who has seen something of Mesmerism will recognise in the above story one of its commonest phenomena.

But a more conclusive instance still has been already mentioned in Letter X. M. Petetin made a chain of seven persons holding hands, the seventh holding the hand of a cataleptic patient, who at that time heard by her fingers only. When Dr. Petetin spoke to the fingers of the first, i. e. the most remote, person of the chain, the cataleptic person heard him as well as if he had spoken to her own fingers. Even when a stick was made to form part of the circuit, the cataleptic still heard Dr. Petetin’s whisper, uttered at the other end of the chain. Not so, however, if one of the parties forming the chain wore silk gloves.

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VI. Trance-Identification of persons at a distance by means of material objects.—A very lucid clairvoyante, her eyes being bandaged, recognises not the less, without preparation or effort, every acquaintance present in the room; describes their dress, the contents of their purses, or of letters in their pockets, and reads their innermost thoughts. An ordinary clairvoyante usually requires the contact of the party’s hand with whom it is proposed to bring her into trance-relation; then only does she first know any thing about her new patient. It cannot be doubted that, in the latter case, it is the establishment of an Od-current between the two that enables the mind of the clairvoyante to penetrate the interior being of the visiter,—just as, in the humblest effects of common mesmerism, a relation is sensibly established between the party entranced and her mesmeriser, through the Od-current which he had previously directed upon her, in order to produce the trance. So far, all is theoretically clear enough.

But how is the establishment of the same relation between the clairvoyante and a party wholly unknown to her, and residing many miles off, to be explained, when the only visible medium of physical connexion employed has been a lock of hair or a letter written by the distant party, and placed in the hands of the clairvoyante? Let me begin by giving the explanation, and afterwards exemplify the phenomenon out of my own experience.

I conceive that the lock of hair, or the letter on which his hand has rested, is charged with the Od-fluid emanating from the distant person; and that the clairvoyante measures exactly the force and quality of this dose of Od, and, as it were, individualizes it. Then, using186 this clue, distance being annihilated to the entranced mind, it seeks for, or is drawn towards, whatever there is more of this same individual Od quality any where in space. When that is found, the party sought is identified, and brought into relation with the clairvoyante, who proceeds forthwith to tell all about him.

Now for an exemplification of this marvellous phenomenon. Being at Boppard, a letter of mine addressed to a friend in Paris was by him put into the hands of M. Alexis, who was asked to describe me. M. Alexis told at once my age and stature, my disposition, and my illness; how that I am entirely crippled, and at that time of the day, half-past eleven, A.M. was in bed. All this, to be sure, M. Alexis might have read in my friend’s mind, without going farther. But, he added, this gentleman lives on the sea-coast. My friend denied the assertion; but M. Alexis continued very positive that he was right. Now, most oddly, the Rhine, on the banks of which I resided then, is at Boppard the boundary of Prussia; and I never cross it, or visit Nassau, but I am in the habit of sitting on the bank, listening to the breaking of the surge, which the passing steamers create, and which exactly resembles the murmur of the sea. This very mistake of M. Alexis helped to convince me that this performance of his was genuine. However, being stoutly contradicted by my friend, M. Alexis reconsidered the matter, and said, “No; he does not live on the sea-coast, but on the Rhine, twenty leagues from Frankfort.” This answer was exact. But there was another point which M. Alexis hit with curious felicity. I should observe that this friend was one of a few months’ date, who had no means of comparing what I am with what I was formerly. But it had happened that I had written,187 not to him, but to a friend resident in England, about the same time, that, ill as I was, my mind was singularly clear and active, and that I regarded the fact as a sign my end was at hand; that the mental brightness probably resembled the flaring-up of a rushlight before it goes out. Well, M. Alexis, adverting to my condition, observed that I was extremely weak, and had suffered much from irritation of the nerves;—facts true enough, but which certainly would not have led him to infer the existence of that clearness of mind which I had myself remarked. Nevertheless, strangely added M. Alexis, “Le morale n’en est pas atteint; au contraire, l’esprit est plus dégagé et plus vif qu’auparavant.” I can therefore entertain no doubt, that at four hundred miles’ distance, merely by handling a recent letter from me, M. Alexis had identified me as its writer, through the Od-fluid the letter conveyed; and had truly penetrated my physical and mental being so completely, that most that was important in my story lay distinctly revealed before him.

VII. Mental Travelling by clairvoyantes.—Let me begin with an instance. The following extract from the Zoist contains a very interesting narrative by Lord Ducie, which is exactly to the point:

“In the highest departments or phenomena of mesmerism, he for a long time was a disbeliever, and could not bring himself to believe in the power of reading with the eyes bandaged, or of mental travelling; at length, however, he was convinced of the truth of those powers, and that, too, in so curious and unexpected a way, that there could have been no possibility of deception. It happened that he had to call upon a surgeon on business, and when he was there the surgeon said to him,188 ‘You have never seen my little clairvoyante.’ He replied that he never had, and should like to see her very much. He was invited to call the next day, but upon his replying that he should be obliged to leave town that evening, he said, ‘Well, you can come in at once. I am obliged to go out; but I will ring the bell for her, and put her to sleep, and you can ask her any questions you please.’ He (Lord Ducie) accordingly went in. He had never been in the house in his life before, and the girl could have known nothing of him. The bell was rung; the clairvoyante appeared: the surgeon, without a word passing, put her to sleep, and then he put on his hat and left the room. He (Lord Ducie) had before seen something of mesmerism, and he sat by her, took her hand, and asked her if she felt able to travel. She replied, ‘Yes;’ and he asked her if she had ever been in Gloucestershire, to which she answered that she had not, but should very much like to go there, as she had not been in the country for six years: she was a girl of about seventeen years old. He told her that she should go with him, for he wanted her to see his farm. They travelled (mentally) by the railroad very comfortably together, and then (in his imagination) got into a fly and proceeded to his house. He asked her what she saw; and she replied, ‘I see an iron gate and a curious old house.’ He asked her, ‘How do you get to it?’ she replied, ‘By this gravel-walk;’ which was quite correct. He asked her how they went into it; and she replied, ?I see a porch—a curious old porch189.‘ It was probably known to many, that his house, which was a curious old Elizabethan building, was entered by a porch, as she had described. He asked her what she saw on the porch, and she replied, truly, that it was covered with flowers. He then said, ?Now, we will turn in at our right hand; what do you see in that room?’ She answered with great accuracy, ‘I see a book case, and a picture on each side of it.’ He told her to turn her back to the book case, and say what she saw on the other side; and she said, ‘I see something shining, like that which soldiers wear.’ She also described some old muskets and warlike implements which were hanging in the hall; and upon his asking her how they were fastened up, (meaning by what means they were secured,) she mistook his question, but replied, ‘The muskets are fastened up in threes,’ which was the case. He then asked of what substance the floors were built; and she said, ‘Of black and white squares,’ which was correct. He then took her to another apartment, and she very minutely described the ascent to it as being by four steps, He (Lord Ducie) told her to enter by the right door, and say what she saw there; she said, ‘There is a painting on each side of the fire-place.’ Upon his asking her if she saw any thing particular in the fire-place, she replied, ‘Yes; it is carved up to the ceiling,’ which was quite correct, for it was a curious old Elizabethan fire-place. There was at Totworth-court a singular old chestnut-tree; and he told her that he wished her to see a favourite tree, and asked her to accompany him. He tried to deceive her by saying, ‘Let us walk close up to it;’ but she replied, ‘We cannot, for there are railings round it.’ He said, ‘Yes, wooden railings;’ to which she answered, ‘No, they are of iron,’ which was the case. He asked, ‘What tree is it?’ and she replied that she had been so little in the country that she could not tell; but upon his asking her to describe the leaf, she said, ‘It is a leaf as dark as the geranium-leaf, large, long, and jagged at the edges.’ He (Lord Ducie) apprehended that no one could describe190 more accurately than that the leaf of the Spanish chestnut. He then told her he would take her to see his farm, and desired her to look over a gate into a field which he had in his mind, and tell him what she saw growing; she replied that the field was all over green, and asked if it was potatoes, adding that she did not know much about the country. It was not potatoes, but turnips. He then said, ‘Now look over this gate to the right, and tell me what is growing there.’ She at once replied, ‘There is nothing growing there; it is a field of wheat, but it has been cut and carried.’ This was correct; but knowing that, in a part of the field, grain had been sown at a different period, he asked her if she was sure that the whole of it had been cut. She replied, that she could not see the end of the field, as the land rose in the middle, which in truth it did. He then said to her, ‘Now we are on the brow, can you tell me if it is cut?’ She answered, ‘No, it is still growing here.’ He then said to her, ?Now, let us come to this gate—tell me where it leads to.‘ She replied, ?Into a lane.’ She then went on and described every thing on his farm with the same surprising accuracy; and upon his subsequently inquiring, he found that she was only in error in one trifling matter, for which error any one who had ever travelled (mentally) with a clairvoyante could easily account, without conceiving any breach of the truth.”

If the preceding example stood alone, or if, in parallel cases, no further phenomena manifested themselves, nothing more would be required to explain the facts than to suppose that the mental fellow-traveller reads all your thoughts, and adopts your own imagery and impressions. But there are not wanting cases in which the fellow-traveller has seen what was not in his companion’s mind, and was at variance with his belief; while subse191quent inquiry has proved that the clairvoyante’s unexpected story was true. These more complicated cases prove that the clairvoyante actually pays a mental visit to the scene. But she can do more; she can pass on to other and remoter scenes and places, of which her fellow-traveller has no cognizance.

For example, a young person whom Mr. Williamson mesmerised became clairvoyant. In this state she paid me a mental visit at Boppard; and Mr. Williamson, who had been a resident there, was satisfied that she realized the scene. Afterwards I removed to Weilbach, where Mr. Williamson had never been. Then he proposed to the clairvoyante to visit me again. She reached, accordingly, in mental travelling, my former room in Boppard; and expressed surprise and annoyance at not finding me there, and at observing others in its occupation. Mr. Williamson proposed that she should set out, and try to find me. She said, “You must help me.” Then Mr. Williamson said, “We must go up the river some way, till we come to a great town,” (Mainz.) The clairvoyante said she had got there. “Then,” said Mr. Williamson, “we must now go up another river, (the Maine,) which joins our river at this town, and try and find Dr. Mayo on its banks somewhere.” Then the clairvoyante said, “Oh, there is a large house; let us go and see it; no, there are two large houses—one white, the other red.” Upon this, Mr. Williamson proposed that she should go into one of the two houses, and look about; she quickly recognised my servant, went mentally into my room, found me, and described a particular or two, which were by no means likely to be guess............