The scientific basis of delusions : a new theory of trance, and its bearings on human testimony / by George M. Beard.

  • Beard, George M. (George Miller), 1839-1883.
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The scientific basis of delusions : a new theory of trance, and its bearings on human testimony / by George M. Beard. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    The subject of trance and allied states belongs to the neglected branch of moral pathology, which, as Mr. Lecky observes, is full of possibilities so far unrealized, but in which are undoubt- edly to be made the great advances of the future, and which, in proportion as it is raised to a science, is destined to supplement and correct nearly all the great departments of human history. The central and distinctive fact in the theory of trance here offered, is that it shifts the stand-point from which the phenom- ena are viewed, and shows that it is a subjective, not an ob- jective condition, the numberless exciting causes, which have- hitherto drawn almost exclusively the attention of observers, being in themselves powerless, unless acting on nature’s physi- cally or psychaly predisposed, no one of them being essential to the appearance of the phenomena. The difference between the objective and subjective methods of considering trance is as radical, if, for the sake of clearness, the comparison be allowed, as the difference between the Ptolemaic and Copernican theories of the universe. By the Copernican theory—the first formal revolt against the despotism of the eye under which, from the earliest history, the human race, civilized as well as barbarous, had been willingly subjected — it was proved that not the earth as it appeared, but the sun was the center of the solar system, and since this hypoth- esis was refuted, not b}r theology alone, but by the unani- mous experience of mankind, it will never cease to be a marvel that Copernicus was allowed to die a natural death. This sub- jective theory of trance, and in connection with it the physiologi- cal law announced in this treatise, that no human being has any qualities different in kind from those that belong to the species in general,1 are in their relation to the testimony of all the senses what the Copernican theory was to the testimony of the eye, since their acceptance involves the rejection of very much that men hear and feel, as well as see, and will enable us to break away from many of the shackles that have hitherto bound the world to superstition and false reasoning. Practically, in every-day life, we are compelled to accept the evidence of the senses, and with certain implied, and oftentimes 1 This law is derived from all physiological observation. It is, more over, an inevitable deduction from the theory of evolution, according to which all new qualities are the result of slow development. If any human being were found to possess a sixth sense, the evolution theory, as now understood, would be utterly overthrown.