France -- Description and travel; France -- Social life and customs
To do M. C---- justice, when he heard the result, he manifested surprise
rather than any less confident feeling. I was closely questioned, first,
as to whether either of the family had not been ill, and secondly,
whether I had not felt a secret desire to magnetise any one of them. To
all these interrogatories, truth compelled me to give unqualified
negatives. I had hardly thought of the subject during the whole time. As
this interview took place at my own house, politeness compelled me to
pass the matter off as lightly as possible. There happened to be several
ladies present, however, the evening M. C---- called, and, thinking the
occasion a good one for him to try his powers on some one besides his
regular _somnambules_, I invited him to magnetise any one of the party
who might be disposed to submit to the process. To this he made no
difficulty, choosing an English female friend as the subject of the
experiment. The lady in question raised no objection, and the doctor
commenced with great zeal, and with every appearance of faith in his own
powers. No effect, however, was produced on this lady, or on one or two
more of the party, all of whom obstinately refused even to gape. M.
C---- gave the matter up, and soon after took his leave, and thus closed
my personal connexion with animal magnetism.
If you ask me for the conclusions I have drawn from these facts, I shall
be obliged to tell you, that I am in doubt how far the parties concerned
deceived others, and how far they deceived themselves. It is difficult
to discredit entirely all the testimony that has been adduced in behalf
of this power; and one is consequently obliged to refer all the
established facts to the influence of the imagination. Then testimony
itself is but a precarious thing, different eyes seeing the same objects
in different lights.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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