“I am not disposed to question the existence of such a principle,” said Mr. Merton, “except in the form asserted by Mr. Dodson, or when it is explained as the immediate action of the mind or will of the mesmerizer upon the mesmerized. The fluid asserted by Mesmer, after the animal magnetists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as Wirdig, Fludd, Maxwell, Kircher, Van Helmont, simply revised by Baron Reichenbach with a great show of demonstration, though denied by Deleuze and some other mesmerists, I have no good reason for doubting. I am willing to concede the fact, that this fluid or agent exists and is employed by Mr. Sowerby in his experiments. I am willing to concede that there is a fluid or agent, not electricity, not magnetism, but analogous to them, contended for by Baron Reichenbach, that pervades a numerous class of bodies, and may be artificially accumulated, or stimulated to increased activity. But suppose this; suppose the mesmerizer, wizard, sorcerer, witch, magician, actually uses it, I must still ask Mr. Sowerby to tell me how he proves it to be the sole principle of the phenomena produced? That in most of the cases recorded, if not in all, there are proper mesmeric or odic phenomena, naturally or artificially produced, is, I think, undeniable. The flowers used by Grandier, in the case of the nuns of Loudun, and the fumigations and sufflations of the old magicians, all prove the resort to magnetism. The rod and tub of Mesmer, and the cumbrous machinery he used, though not indispensable, every magnetizer knows are a useful mean. But as these are only subsidiary, how is it to be demonstrated that mesmerism itself is the sole efficient cause, not merely of some of the accessory phenomena, but of them all? In the phenomena of table-turning, so extensively witnessed, magnetism is not absolutely essential. They began, as all the recent spirit-manifestations, in mesmerism, and at first the table was mesmerized by a circle formed round it, joining their hands and resting them on it.” “The tables are turned,” said Dr. Corning, “by the involuntary and unconscious muscular contraction of the hands pressing upon it. This has been proved.” “So says a French Academician, and so also says Professor Farraday, and tables, very likely, may be turned in some such way; but the table is frequently known to turn and cut up its capers without any circle being formed, without any person being near it, or visible hand touching it.”