Letters on mesmerism / by Harriet Martineau.

Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Letters on mesmerism / by Harriet Martineau. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    cent are stronger in their rectitude than ever, rebuking levity, reproving falsehood and flattery, and indignantly refusing to tell secrets, or say or do anything they ought not; while the more faulty then confess their sins, and grieve over and ask pardon for their offences. The volitions of the Mesmerist may actuate the move¬ ments of the patient’s limbs, and suggest the material of his ideas; but they seem unable to touch his morale. In this state the morale appears supreme, as it is rarely found in the ordinary condition. If this view is mis¬ taken, if it is founded on too small a collection of facts, let it be brought to the test and corrected. Let the truth be ascertained and established; for it cannot be extinguished, and it is too important to be neglected. And now one word of respectful and sympathising accost to those reverent and humble spirits who pain¬ fully question men’s right to exercise faculties whose scope is a new region of insight and foresight. They ask whether to use these faculties be not to encroach on holy ground, to trespass on the precincts of the future and higher life. May I inquire of these, in reply, what they conceive to be the divinely appointed boundary of our knowledge and our powers ? Can they establish, or indicate, any other boundary than the limit of the knowledge and powers themselves ? Has not the attempt to do so failed from age to age ? Is it not the most remarkable feature of the progress of Time that, in handing over the future into the past, he transmutes its material, incessantly and without pause, converting what truth was mysterious, fearful, impious to glance at, into that which is safe, beautiful, and beneficent to contemplate and use: a clearly con¬ secrated gift from the Father of all to the children who seek the light of his countenance? Where is his pleasure to be ascertained but in the ascertain¬ ment of what he gives and permits, in the proof and verification of what powers he has bestowed on us, and what knowledge he has placed within our reach?