Popular Superstitions, and the Truths Contained Therein: With an Account of MesmerismMayo, Herbert
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Popular Superstitions, and the Truths Contained Therein: With an Account of Mesmerism
Mayo, Herbert
Mesmerism; Parapsychology and medicine; Superstition
took to conceal our plans, the clairvoyant young lady really knew
beforehand what was expected of her, and performed accordingly. I speak
in reference to the single instance which I have myself witnessed. I
cannot, however, refuse to credit the testimony of good observers—such
as Dr. Elliotson—to facts which seem to establish the genuineness of
phreno-mesmerism. In its double relation to phrenology and mesmerism,
this inquiry well merits attention.
XII. _Rapport. Mesmeric Relation. Psychical Attraction._—Without
presuming to place absolute confidence in the preceding speculations,
but, on the contrary, apologizing for their hypothetical character,
on the plea that any theory is better than none, let me now
recapitulatorily put in array the facts and principles to which the
terms at the head of this section refer:—
1. I hold that the mind of a living person, in its most normal state,
is always, to a certain extent, acting exoneurally, or beyond the limit
of the bodily person; but, possibly, always in conjunction with some
Od-operation.
2. I suppose that there must be laws of neuro-psychical attraction, or
that there are definite circumstances which determine our exoneural
apprehension to direct itself upon this or that object or person.
So, in common perception, the exoneural apprehension probably moves
back along the lines of material impression, to reach the object
perceived, which so attracts it.
So, in sudden liking or aversion at first sight—or, more properly, on
all occasions of meeting strangers—an exoneural mingling of reciprocal
appreciation takes place; different persons being differently gifted
with intuitive discernment, as others or the same with powers of
pleasingly affecting most they meet.
So Zschokke’s seer-gift would have been but the result of a greater
exoneural mobility of his mind, whereby he was occasionally drawn to
such mental affinity with a stranger, that he knew his whole life and
circumstances.
So in panic fears, in all cases where impressions seem heightened
by the sympathy of many, the power of psychical attraction we may
presume to be increased by its concentration on one subject, and the
participation of all in one thought. The Rev. Hare Townshend, in his
interesting work on mesmerism, declares that he has more than once
succeeded in the following fact of sympathetic mental influence. All
the members of a party then present have conspired against an expected
visiter; and when he came—carefully, at the same time, abstaining from
alluding to some special subject agreed on—they have striven silently
and mentally to drive it into his thoughts; and in a short time he has
spoken of it.
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