Insanity explains abnormal, but not superhuman phenomena. It is a disease of the body, not of the mind itself. The mind, being a simple spiritual or immaterial substance, is not susceptible of physical derangement, and mental alienation proceeds from the lesion or alteration of the bodily organs or conditions on which the mind is dependent in its manifestations. It is cured, when curable, by medical, not by purely spiritual treatment; by physic and good regimen, not by exorcisms. A few days after the conversation I have detailed, my friends being again present, the subject was resumed. Dr. Corning sustained his hypothesis triumphantly by selecting such facts in the cases brought forward as it would explain, and by denying all the rest,—a very convenient and common practice of theorizers,—even out of the medical profession. Mr. Sowerby, who had made a fortune by mesmerism and spirit-rapping, thought that only a monomaniac would attempt to explain the mysterious phenomena in question by insanity. There was in the cases not a symptom of mania, and the persons affected, in their moments of repose, and even while the affection lasted, were in the normal exercise of their faculties, and indicated no signs of mental alienation, answering always, when answering at all, pertinently, never at random, consecutively, never incoherently, as is the case with the insane. He explained them, not by mental alienation, but by the accumulation or increased activity of a great and all pervading principle, perhaps the vital principle itself, called the mesmeric or odic principle. He had himself produced phenomena analogous to the most extraordinary recorded in history.