dormant powers have been brought into action. This is curious: and so is the doctrine of an eminent physician of my acquaintance, — that, the progression of Man being the aim of Providence, that progression is provided for by the gift of a new endowment from time to time; the last and greatest gift being that class of powers elicited by Mesmerism. Whether these physicians hold the personal progression to be cause or effect, they anticipate, as we do, further development. My own supposition is, that whatever powers we have, have always been there: and that what remains is for us to obtain control over them. All history abounds with traces of the Natural Magic which science shows, sooner or later, to be no magic at all; that is, exactly as much of a miracle as every thing else is, and no more. Thus, we have the daughter of Sesostris, who might be twin sister, as to powers, with Joan of Arc; and the cures of disease by gods and priests in heathen temples; and heathen oracles, and prophecy every where; and witchcraft, and love charms, and ghosts, and second sight; — all instances of the sympathy, and clairvoyance and prévoyance with which we are now familiar, and which science is tracing to their origin, or abiding-place in the brain. Now, if we ever obtain any thing like the control over the intuitive faculties which the wise mesmerizing phrenologist already holds over the moods and thoughts of the patients in a lunatic asylum,* how essentially

* Appendix F.

changed will be the conditions of human life! All science is changing the conditions of our life. See what Geology of itself (a science younger than I am, I believe) is doing! But how much more important, how infinitely important in comparison,

must be the operation on the human lot of an advancing physiology! Only conceive of the time. when men may at will have certain knowledge of things distant, and things future! To expect

this is merely reasonable. We now obtain from somnambules, and from persons whose intuitive faculty acts (as we should say) spontaneously, (i. e. without the application of Mesmerism,) fragmentary though indisputable knowledge of transactions distant and future: and you and others are tracing out the locality of this power in the brain. You have found its locality; and you are collecting facts as to the conditions of its exercise. If, as I believe, a similar scientific procedure never yet failed to establish a power of control over the agent which was its subject, we cannot suppose that it will fail here. All influences seem to be tending to the reduction of Fortuity in human life and affairs. By this particular achievement, it may be well nigh abolished. One is tempted to go into a speculation upon what human life must or may be, on such terms: but the subject is too prodigious. It may be glorious to ponder in silence; but it is almost too great for discussion. For one thing, by the way, how completely a matter of course will

then be that doctrine of Necessity,* which now appears so indisputable to you and me, but which one daily hears contested with a shallowness of reasoning, and a defiance of evidence, which make one wonder when evidence will be received on moral, as it is on most physical, questions!

It seems to me that the most significant thing you have ever written to me,—a thing as significant as any one ever wrote to any body, - is that your blind friend, -blind from birth, has proved that she sees in her sleep by having been actually prévoyante of visible incidents. If you can establish this, if proof, or sufficient testimony, of it can be duly recorded during her lifetime, it surely will be as vast a contribution to the science of Mind and of Man as has ever been afforded by any age. Can this be done? If not done already, will you not set about it immediately? You never in your life had so important a thing to do, and most likely never will again. Let us have proof that a person who never saw by the eye has declared any thing (not coming within the range of a guess) which was happening at a distance, or which happened at a future time, with incidents of color or form belonging thereto, and we have arrived at the greatest discovery ever made by accident or research.

I am thankful for what you tell me of your view in regard to the experience of persons using a sense for the first time, at a mature age, as Cheselden's

* Appendix G.

patients and others. I might give you some illustrations here, too, illustrations of how the exter

nal organ is a not indispensable apparatus for the exercise of the sense; but I am detaining you too long. You are aware that when mesmerized, I, deaf as I am, have occasionally heard otherwise than through the ear, as somnambules are seen to read with the sole of the foot or the top of the forehead. And I could give you more evidence of the same kind unconnected with Mesmerism. But I have run on too long: and I want you to proceed to tell me what you think you know of the mutual action of different parts of the brain; by what laws, and in what modes, action of one part excites action in another; where the coöperation is constant, and where (as we should say) fortuitous. For instance, why it is that certain musical sounds and arrangement of such sounds arouse various affections and passions, the same, at the same moment, in any number of persons, as when the Eolian harp wails, and the war tones wake the spirit: and what you make of the great fact of the Association of Ideas.

XIV.

FACTS ABOUT THE SENSES UNDER VARIOUS CONDITIONS.

H. G. A. To H. M.

I SUPPOSE that Hartley has been greatly overestimated, and that his philosophy was founded chiefly on a rather superficial generalization of Newton's theory of vibrating media. I do not wonder at your disrelish of the metaphysicians who have had no basis of agreement. Mind was divided and parcelled out into divisions or categories, by each writer as his fancy suggested, every one differing from the others, and each thinking himself most profound, and as certain of his position as any sectarian is of the evidence and principles of his particular faith. You would find several distinct faculties included under one term; and then a simple faculty split into several; or a mode of action taken for a primitive faculty. Thus Mind was divided into imaginary elements, just as Nature has been divided. Or you would find men building all the laws of Mind on some one fact, such as the principle of Association, — just as the laws of Nature were supposed to be included in the laws of Numbers. Thus Mind was fashioned into fanciful forms by the metaphysicians, while the physiologists were, on the other hand, slicing up the brain as they would a turnip, instead of unfold