During hours of physical repose, while the system is recruiting and producing new energy, and while organs of sense are closed to external impressions, the mind makes imaginative excursions to different places and contemplates different things. During such journeyings the waves of sound, reflections of sight, susceptibilities of feelings, pleasures of taste are all supposed to be enjoyed. Were all this an experience of the spirit it would be distinguished by the perfection of its qualifications during the state of disconnection from the body. It is an experience of mind, still connected with the body, and the impressions are received through disturbed conditions of the nerves of sensation. It follows that there is an internal medium of sensation working upon the mind while the external medium is in a state of suspended connection with the outward world.2 It follows
also that there is another medium operating upon the internal nerves of sensation, independently of internal and external exciting causes. The nature of this medium is explained by the muscular and sympathetic nerves. Man possesses two coatings, classified as serous and mucous surfaces. One is the covering of each organ, nerve and fascia of the muscles; the other is the inner covering. They generate and sustain a positive and negative fluid, which controls the circulation. The negative expands the ventricles and attracts the blood to its reservoir; the positive contracts the ventricles and drives the blood through the system. The serous surfaces are susceptible of feeling while the mucous are not. The muscular nerves are controlled by the mind, while the sympathetic—or nerves of sensation—are the medium of actuating the mind, whose motion produces thought. The brain is composed of a sensitive congeries of fibres, to which no other part of the body bears any analogy; it is attractive or positive and receives impressions irresistibly. It has positive and negative poles, the one controlling and the other transmitting power. That ethereal substance which serves as a medium may be termed magnetism, while the muscular motion of the system is performed through the medium of electricity.
When there is full and uninterrupted exercise of all organs of the body, when they are in perfect unison, the system is thoroughly magnetised. In order to demagnetise it, the equilibrium must be overcome and its positive power extracted by a power still more positive. This will produce the unconscious state which is called magnetic. The medium under consideration exists between all organic beings, for magnetism constitutes the atmosphere by which every person is surrounded. It extends through all things and man is placed thereby over the lower animal creation. His positive or subduing power renders the beasts subject, and they receive it by virtue of the same medium existing between organ and brain.
The state termed magnetic is induced by one system coming in contact with another of less positive power and attracting this from the subject. It is that power which exists upon the nerves of sensation terminating in the serous surfaces. When this fluid is withdrawn the subject is no longer susceptible of external impressions, because the medium by which they are transmitted is absent. He is then demagnetised, leaving sensation only upon the internal or mucous surfaces which produce vital action. The negative power remains; the positive has been suspended; and vital action becomes torpid and feeble. This is the magnetic state, and in this peculiar condition the patient is in sympathy with or is submissive to the will—or positive magnetic power—of the operator. It is the first state, in which the subject is negative and the operator positive. The negative phenomena observed in the subject's system stand in analogy to muscular motion. Subject and operator form one system in power, an invisible union subsisting, notwithstanding the visible distinction. The position is parallel to that which takes place in each individual, when uninterrupted in his functional capacities, one part of his system being positive, the other negative, the two
one in equilibrium, and the positive mind acting upon the negative body.
There are properly four magnetic states; and further as regards the first, it is characterised by no special phenomena, save a certain dulness pervading the system because the external organs are in a measure divested of their normal share of magnetism. Persons in this state lose none of their senses but are susceptible to external impressions. They have also full power of muscular action, and midway between the first and second states they are inclined to happy feelings. Whatever takes place is of a physical nature while in higher states phenomena consist in the development of mental powers.1 It is through the mental organisation that the second state manifests, and herein the subject is deprived of muscular power.2 The pupil of the eye, tympanic mem-
brane and cavity of the ear expand, but their normal actions are suspended. The extremities are somewhat cold, and in later developments all feeling ceases, so that painless surgical operations are then possible. The subject is associated with the operator mentally, and sympathetic but indefinite and incoherent accounts are received from the mind of the subject, analogous to a record of impressions obtained in dream. In the first part of the third state the subject has partial power of hearing, speech and muscular action, but unconsciousness supervenes in the middle—so far as the external world is concerned. There is strong sympathy between operator and subject, in virtue of animal electricity, which is the agent of muscular motion, and it is through this fluid that magnetic sleep is produced. The mind of the operator is concentrated on this object; the fluid passes from his own brain and nerves to the brain and system of the subject, constituting the sympathetic chain between them. All phenomena of sympathetic somnambulism are accounted for in this manner; but the subject is wholly unsusceptible to tactions and the magnetic medium is far less active than in previous states, though the negative or muscular forces are still preserved. He is, however, eminently open to the external media which connect mind with matter, so that he sees, hears and performs strange and mysterious things. The state is not clairvoyant, though often regarded as such; it is still in analogy with natural somnambulism, it being understood that the one is induced by magnetism and the other naturally by inactivity of the magnetic medium or sensation. The magnetic subject has progressed in his mental capacity toward the condition known as death, for the positive power is suspended while the negative or muscular persists, and the increased mental
perception is through the medium of its own association. Still higher manifestations of the mental order will be observed in passing from the third to the fourth state. About midway between the two conditions the chain of sympathy between positive and negative is nearly disconnected. By a corresponding loss of sympathy between the mind and physical system, the former is liberated from all inclinations to which the body would render it subject: the remaining connection is in virtue of a very rare medium similar to that which connects one thought with another. So does the subject progress to the fourth state, and his mind is capable of receiving impressions from foreign or proximate objects, according to the medium with which it becomes associated. The analogy with natural death remains in this state, except that death is produced by the loss of both positive and negative forces, while in that of magnetism the positive and negative of two persons interact and are blended.
The science is thus explained,1 with the general phenomena belonging thereto; but the particulars will vary exceedingly, according to the various dispositions and organisations upon which the magnetic condition is induced. To sum up now on the subject: (1) The magnetic state is an extension of the motive powers of organic life; and the forces which control one system in sensation, life, health and enjoyment can be united to another system and become as one; (2) the earlier states are analogous to phenomena characteristic of various conditions of natural sleep and somnambulism, while later states are in correspondence with the phenomena of
physical death; the connection subsisting between the inner life or mind and the outer organisation is in virtue of a medium analogous to that between one thought and another, understood familiarly as the power of concentration; (3) to this should be added that the source of my own impressions in the magnetic and clairvoyant states is in the Second Sphere,1 and that the knowledge which I receive is obtained by associating with those causes which lead the mind instantaneously to the effects produced by them.