Second-sight.-Nervous epidemics.

It is a law of "second-sight," that whoever touches a seer during a vision, is enabled, if impressible, to see the same. Sensitive persons, by touching Mrs. Hauffe, when she had visions of spectres, were made to see them also.a

"Specific cerebral impress is the grand law of all nervous epidemics." This law is seen in the history of every nervous epidemic of past ages,—in the Tarantalia of Italy, the St. John's dance of Germany, the St. Vitus's dance of France, the preaching mania of Sweden, the witch mania of Salem and Europe, and the "Kentucky jerks."

This law is seen throughout the entire present movement. Every thing has been calculated to create, foster and develop the germs of a tremendous nervous epidemic.

If, therefore, all the facts which constitute the pneumatic argument may be accounted for on purely natural principles, without spiritual intervention, then the supposition of such intervention is unphilosophical, and the whole fabric falls to the ground.

According to this form of the apneumatic argument, all the phenomena of clairvoyance, dreams, insanity, hallucination, witchcraft, second-sight, apparitions, haunted houses, divination, rhabdomancy, &c., in

a Rogers, § 670.

True and false revelation.-Chap. III.-Mental automacy.

all ages, are not properly spiritual, but physical products of organized matter alone. Hence the distinction between true and false revelations, that the former are of the brain solely, mere material produce, while the latter are of the spirit, and are properly spiritual products.

CHAPTER III.

AUTOMATIC OR INVOLUNTARY MENTAL ACTIVITY.

AN argument radically different from this, though employing nearly the same induction of facts, is preferred by many.

Admitting automatic cerebral action in part, they would unite with it automatic, or involuntary mental action. There is, they hold, an activity of the mental faculties, which escapes the notice of consciousness.

There are impressions, not dormant in the brain, but stored in the memory." Odyle, they speak of under the phrases "the nervous principle"-" an intermediate agent by which mind acts on matter, and which is itself neither mind nor matter,"-" neither spirit nor matter."b The phenomena of clairvoyance

a "To Daimonion," p. 43.

b Ib. pp. 17, 25, 27.

Hypothesis accounts for all to facts.

The

are, in part at least, abnormal mental effects. soul, being able to avail itself by clairvoyance of whatever is lodged in another mind with which it is en rapport, unconsciously discharges it by alphabetic indications. Some go so far as to suppose the soul by clairvoyance may have access to whatever is lodged in any mind, stored in books, or even to those forms of all things past, present, and to come, which are held in suspension, as it were, in the universal odylic sea, and can thus obtain whatever knowledge is necessary. That in this state, partly disembodied, as it were, the soul has power to rap, speak, hear, appear, and move material bodies, as in cases already cited. Now let the medium be a clairvoyant; or, if not, en rapport with a clairvoyant in the circle, or at a distance, and even if the phenomena are not all fully accounted for, at least a probability is created that they can, and will be, after maturer scientific investigation. The movement, as a whole, is a "wide-spread excitement of a nervous nature." A "mental disease."c A mental and moral epidemic.

Many of the statements are no doubt unintentionally exaggerated. They show marks of superficial observation, rash unscientific experiment, excited imagination, easy credulity, and premature decision.

a "To Daimonion," pp. 41, 42.

b Ib pp. 12, 13.

c Ib. p. 150.

Disappointed seekers.-Cicero's verdict.

Under rigid rules of experiment, the tone and hue of the picture is materially changed. The tint becomes neutral which was a moment before brilliant and blazing. Prodigious physical demonstrations, precise and startling intellectual communications, are abundant in books. Yet, seek them, and they are like the desert mirage. Tests are eluded, experiment eschewed. An obsequious faith is demanded in developments confused, vague, and imbecile. Is it not more probable that manifestations so mediocre in talent, frivolous in character, contradictory in sentiment, inimical to evangelical religion, health, reason, and social weal, should be the results of mental disease, than of a new spiritual revelation?

Nay, in view of their frequent mercenary character, and the contrast between their high-sounding promise and its slender fulfilment, may we not say with Cicero:

"Now I own that I have no confidence in fortunetellers, mercenary soothsayers, nor CIRCLES. Such are divine neither by science nor by art; priests of superstition, impudent prophets, imbecile, insane or hungerbitten. Ignorant of the road, they show it to others; promising riches, they beg a penny. From the promised store they appropriate their penny, the rest is yours.'

a Psychomantia, "Places where one inquires any thing of the spirits of the dead."

b De Divinatione, lib. i. cap. 58.

[Leverett's Lat. Lexicon.]

a

THE pneumatic argument is primarily a statement of facts, and of a claim inwrought, of spiritual causation. To this the apneumatic argument appears as respondent. Now, then, the pneumatic enters, in turn, to review and defend.

Admitting the odylic character of the phenomena, it is claimed, simply, that spirits act in their production by odylic law. Whatever, therefore, modifies the odylic conditions, modifies the access and operation o of spirits.

The discussion may be conveniently divided into the philosophic and the biblical.

I.-Philosophic Argument.

The theory of automatic cerebral action is objectionable:

1. Because it is equally valid against the existence

a Supra, 9 et seq.