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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    jeet of human testimony, that it particularly appeals to the at- tention of the thoughtful. It would, indeed,appear that the recon- struction of the principles of evidence by the aid of our present knowledge of the human brain, in health and disease, is the one transcendent need of our time. Illustrations are everywhere. A young adventurer from the West, claiming the divine gift of knowing what is in the mind of another, marches like some conqueror through the heart of the nation; science at first is dumb with wonder, or turns to superstition in his presence; the press, secular and religious, without dissent, becomes his submissive ally; high society receives the stranger to its arms; a great city falls at his feet; physicians and professors are en- rolled as his body-guard; for a time he makes a college his cita- del. A notorious and not over-skillful trickster crosses the sea, and at once brings literary and scientific London to its knees, from which it is yet but half risen; arraigned in court, and by accident rather than by science convicted, both continents con- tribute to aid his appeal. In the leading medical society of the country a prominent member reads a paper advocating the extreme claims of somnambulists, and not a word of protest is offered. Even those who most strenuously oppose these sur- vivals, give no’ sound reasons for their opposition; whatever of conventional logic may chance to be cast upon the shore after these storms have passed, is usually found in the hands of superstition; the logic of the schools, indeed, is always, or almost always on the side of delusions. Not only the great, but the very greatest minds are thus bound in the chains of human testimony. For forty years, by intervals, carefully selected committees of the French Academy struggled with mesmerism, and after a series of experiments, that fairly bristled with elements of error, left the problem unsolved; the cases of clairvoyance recorded by Swedenborg, were a puzzle even to the acute intellect of Kant; Sir William Hamil- ton solemnly doubts whether mind can act on matter at a dis- tance; Bain questioned, even to his dying day, though with tim- idity and caution, the possibility of the existence of a magnetic fluid; George Eliot opens one of the chapters of Daniel Deronda with the confession that “second-sight is a flag over disputed ground;” while Emerson, one of the bravest of philosophers, declares that all these claims are mysteries of which a wise man would prefer to be ignorant.1 These great thinkers are no better 1 Article on Demonology, North American Review, March 1877.