To assert so dogmatically that mesmerism and animal magnetism are but hallucinations, implies that it can be proved. But where are these proofs, which alone ought to have authority in science? Thousands of times the chance was given to the academicians to assure themselves of its truth; but, they have invariably declined. Vainly do mesmerists and healers invoke the testimony of the deaf, the lame, the diseased, the dying, who were cured or restored to life by simple manipulations and the apostolic “laying on of hands.” “Coincidence” is the usual reply, when the fact is too evident to be absolutely denied; “will-o’-the-wisp,” “exaggeration,” “quackery,” are favorite expressions, with our but too numerous Thomases. Newton, the well-known American healer, has performed more instantaneous cures than many a famous physician of New York City has had patients in all his life; Jacob, the Zouave, has had a like success in France. Must we then consider the accumulated testimony of the last forty years upon this subject to be all illusion, confederacy with clever charlatans, and {166} lunacy? Even to breathe such a stupendous fallacy would be equivalent to a self-accusation of lunacy. Notwithstanding the recent sentence of Leymarie, the scoffs of the skeptics and of a vast majority of physicians and scientists, the unpopularity of the subject, and, above all, the indefatigable persecutions of the Roman Catholic clergy, fighting in mesmerism woman’s traditional enemy, so evident and unconquerable is the truth of its phenomena that even the French magistrature was forced tacitly, though very reluctantly, to admit the same. The famous _clairvoyante_, Madame Roger, was charged with obtaining money under false pretenses, in company with her mesmerist, Dr. Fortin. On May 18th, 1876, she was arraigned before the _Tribunal Correctionnel_ of the Seine. Her witness was Baron Du Potet, the grand master of mesmerism in France for the last fifty years; her advocate, the no less famous Jules Favre. Truth for once triumphed—the accusation was abandoned. Was it the extraordinary eloquence of the orator, or bare facts incontrovertible and unimpeachable that won the day? But Leymarie, the editor of the _Revue Spirite_, had also facts in his favor; and, moreover, the evidence of over a hundred respectable witnesses, among whom were the first names of Europe. To this there is but one answer—the magistrates dared not question the facts of mesmerism. Spirit-photography, spirit-rapping, writing, moving, talking, and even spirit-materializations can be simulated; there is hardly a physical phenomenon now in Europe and America but could be imitated—with apparatus—by a clever juggler. The wonders of mesmerism and subjective phenomena alone defy tricksters, skepticism, stern science, and dishonest mediums; _the cataleptic state it is impossible to feign_. Spiritualists who are anxious to have their truths proclaimed and forced on science, cultivate the mesmeric phenomena.