Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1875 edition. Excerpt: ...upon its surface, the magnetic fluid thrown from the eyes; on which magnetic surface in all cases the things seen appear, and not upon or in the surface or substance of the mirror itself, as is apparently the case; but mostly above and in front of it. Sometimes, indeed, the seer sees through the mirror, which, in that case, serves precisely the same ends and uses to the spirit of the out-looker, that the eye-pieces and object-glasses do to the external senses of the teleseopist and microscopical investigator. In mesmeric vision-there is a necessary and unget-rid-of-able rapport and magnetic sympathy between the operator and the subject, which latter is, therefore, quite as likely to give forth the pictures, images, memories, and fancies of the former, as he or she is to reveal the actual truth of and from the outside World. "But spiritual or spirits' magnetisms are not so likely to intrude fantasies; and, therefore, what a medium sees must be true and real." To which I reply, --the objections against human magnetism are tenfold stronger against the spiritual, or the spirits, so-called, even when it is real and true, which it is not, over once in at least two hundred times; for beyond all cavil, what passes for spiritual trance is, in-the vast majority of cases, either simulated, delusive, the effect of mental habit, the effect of the' physicomental influence of the parties present, or the result of a diseased condition of the nerves and brain. But suppose, for argument's sake, a real and bona fide case of spiritual magnetism. How is the medium or bystander to know whether the thing seen is a real photograph of the unseen by mortals, or a transcript from the playful fancy of a disembodied wag or experimenter?...