This perplexity, in which the distinguished philosopher leaves the judgment so equally balanced that it finds it impossible to believe, and yet impossible to disbelieve, forms the right state of mind in which a candid thinker should come to the examination of those more extraordinary phenomena which he has not himself yet witnessed, but the fair inquiry into which may be tendered to him by persons above the imputation of quackery and fraud. Muffler, who is not the least determined, as he is certainly one of the most distinguished, disbelievers of mesmeric phenomena, does not appear to have witnessed, or at least to have carefully examined, them, or he would, perhaps, have seen that even the more extraordinary of those phenomena confirm, rather than contradict, his own general theories, and may be explained by the sympathies one sense has with another,--"the laws of reflection through the medium of the brain." (Physiology of the Senses, p. 1311.) And again by the maxim "that the mental principle, or cause of the mental phenomena, cannot be confined to the brain, but that it exists in a latent state in every part of the organism." (Ibid., p. 1355.) The "nerve power," contended for by Mr. Bain, also may suggest a rational solution of much that has seemed incredible to those physiologists who have not condescended to sift the genuine phenomena of mesmerism from the imposture to which, in all ages, the phenomena exhibited by what may be called the ecstatic temperament have been applied. [3] Descartes, L'Homme, vol. iv. p. 345. Cousin's Edition. [4] Ibid., p. 428. [5] Facts in Mesmerism. [6] La Magic et l'Astrologie dans l'Antiquitd et an Moyen-Age. Par L. F. Alfred Maury, Membre de Nnstitut. p. 225. [7] "She had no illusions when within doors."--Abercrombie, On the Intellectual Powers, p. 277. (15th Edition.) [8] Muller, Physiology of the Senses, Baley's translation, pp. 1068-1395, and elsewhere. Mr. Bain, in his thoughtful and suggestive work on the "Senses and Intellect," makes very powerful use of these statements in support of his proposition, which Faber advances in other words, namely, "the return of the nervous currents exactly on their old track in revived sensations." [9] Perhaps it is for the reason suggested in the text, namely, that the magician requires the interposition of a third imagination between his own and that of the consulting believer, that any learned adept in (so-called) magic will invariably refuse to exhibit without the presence of a third person. Hence the author of "Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magic," printed at Parisy 1852-53--a book less remarkable for its learning than for the earnest belief of a scholar of our own day in the reality of the art of which he records the history--insists much on the necessity of rigidly observing Le Ternaire, in the number of persons who assist in an enchanter's experiments.