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the ear of a mesmerized little boy and speaking to him through it; and no one but herself could remove the malady she had thus imparted. Two other senses also have been always wanting, or rather extremely deficient, namely, smell and taste. and bitters the lady can distinguish, but not flavours. has, however, been one brief and interesting exception, which will be best explained in the writer's own words.

Acids There

'I wonder whether you saw (as I did) lately, in a newspaper, an account of Wordsworth's rapture in once being able to smell a flower; the only time in his life that the sense ever acted. I know what that is; for almost the same thing once happened to me. I had not Wordsworth's good fortune-to smell a flower. I was not well that day; sat down to lunch with a family who were dining early on a leg of mutton. At the first mouthful of mutton, I poured out water hastily and drank-so prodigious, so strong, and so exquisite was the flavour. I went on eating with amazement and extraordinary relish; but I was obliged to take water after every mouthful. It occurred to me to try if I could smell. There was a bottle of eau de Cologne on the mantel-piece. At first I could make nothing of it; but after heating it I could smell it; not at the nose at all, but a little way down the throat. . . . But I was rather shocked to find myself reckoning on my dinner-a great late dinner that I was going to. I might have spared my anticipations, for by that time everything on my plate had become as tasteless as ever.'-p. 121.

Our authoress lets us know, further, that she never has the headache; that when mesmerized she can hear otherwise than through the ear; and that, twice at least in certain depths of the mesmeric state, she has received knowledge, or formed conceptions, devoid of all perceptible intermixture with sensible impressions. These mesmeric experiences were the conscious exercise of a new faculty, and cannot therefore be revealed by ordinary language.

It was inexpressibly delightful, both the matter apprehended, and the power of apprehension. Nothing in the experience of my life can at all compare with that of seeing the melting away of the forms, aspects, and arrangements, under which we ordinarily view nature, and its fusion into the system of forces which is presented to the intellect in the magnetic state. But there is no use in dwelling on an experience which is, from its nature, incommunicable. I have been led to speak of it now by what you have written of our having eight, or nine, or more senses, and of man being yet probably far from fully developed.'-p. 122.

Perhaps, to complete the portrait, one other quotation is requisite.

'I look back with a kind of horror, as well as deep pity, on myself,

in the days when I thought it my duty to cultivate (against nature) an anxious solicitude about my own 'salvation'-my own future spiritual welfare. I should now think this as bad as engrossing myself with storing up means of prosperity while my brother had need. How sweet it is to be loose from all such solicitude, and to let one's best nature have its free play from hour to hour !'—p. 222. These writers set out with the assertion that all philosophical systems previously existing are erroneous, and thus save themselves and us much trouble. Plato is said to have reasoned

well: the seventh chapter of the epistle to the Romans has been thought to contain some sound philosophy: and there are men of later date, such as Leibnitz and Locke and Reid, whose productions are not without merit; but to have combatted these authorities would have consumed much time without any equivalent gain. We heartily approve of the course Mr. Atkinson has preferred. I say that all the systems of the whole world are wrong.' We hold that the man whose blind patient sees in her sleep; and who once seemed, or thought himself, to be all in all; and who talking at random can astonish himself by the happy sequences that occur and the excellence and originality of the matter, would receive no benefit whatever from the speculations of his predecessors.

The work before us has been represented as a book of the barest materialism and atheism; and certainly, in so far as it deals with the existing faith of Christendom, the representation is just. The existence of God and of the soul of man, as these are commonly believed, are treated as the crude inventions of barbarous times or of interested priests: but the ambition of our authors is not only to destroy but to build up, and in effecting the latter part of their purpose they have recourse to an immaterialism and a theism of their own. The God of the Bible, and the human spirit as described in the Bible, they speak of with disdain; but then we are compensated by the mesmeric revelation of the real soul, and of the God of Mr. Atkinson and Miss Martineau, who is the substance of law and the origin of all things.'

True science is ever fruitful of modesty. These writers admit that they cannot fathom the problem of existence. How anything came to be, or came to be as it is, they do not affect to explain. "We know nothing fundamental of nature, nor can we conceive anything of the nature of the primary cause.' They are quite aware that when most has been learned, there is the infinite field of the unknown lying beyond.' But thus far their investigations have conducted them, namely, to the unswerving assurance that 'all causes are material causes,' and that the laws of matter are

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'fundamental.' They hold that matter is ruled by laws of inexorable certainty and force, and that it generates spirit. Whence came the matter or the laws they do not pretend to know, only they are quite sure that 'philosophy finds no personal being or creator, nor sees the want of any.' The difference, therefore, between the old and the new lights is this-that the former resolve the material universe into the will of a being, almighty, wise, and good; the latter can find no cause at all for its existence.

It is, however, in their scrutiny of human nature that these investigators have been rewarded with the most brilliant success. The novelties they have unveiled in this field of research must elicit unbounded admiration: and as philanthropy dictates that momentous discoveries should, as soon as possible, cease to be the exclusive possession of the discerning few, and be brought down to vulgar apprehension, we would suggest that a catechism of the new mental philosophy be at once drawn up for the benefit of the young, and of all disciples, which would read somewhat as follows:

Q. Can you tell me what you are?

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A. Men fancy that they recognise the doings of a mind like their own in nature, instead of perceiving that they are of a form cast from nature, and a response to the surface, or phenomenal form of things without.'-p. 176.

Q. You have spoken of a mind like their own. Can you tell me what the mind is?

A. 'It seems certain that mind is evolved from the grey vesicular matter which forms the external layer over the convolutions' of the brain.-p. 30.

Q. Can you give any other account of mind?

A. A flint stone might become a mirror, in which a philosopher could see himself: but under new circumstances, this Proteus matter-this very mirror which had been a flint stonemight dissolve away, and re-form into a philosopher: and, in place of the reflecting mirror, we should have, gradually evolved from the principle of motion, the phenomena of mind.'-p. 170. Q. Do you not think it probable that men will sooner or later learn to manufacture philosophers from flint stones? A. Decidedly.

Q. Do you not find that the old notion of 'a spirit in man' is very perplexing?

A. Yes, and the new philosophy charms me by its simplicity. Q. Tell me, then, how it explains the mind.

A. Mind is the product of the brain. It is not a thing having

a seat or home in the brain; but it is the manifestation, or expression of the brain in action; as heat and light are of fire, and fragrance of the flower.'-p. 17.

Q. Do you see, or feel, or smell the mind, as it shoots out from the 'grey vesicular matter'?

A. No.

Q. How then do you know that it does so shoot out?

A. Mr. Atkinson tells me so.

Q. You have told me how mind is produced; can you tell me what it is?

A. We perceive that the body is an independent whole, a unity made up of dissimilar parts, each part having its distinct office and relation to other parts, and to the whole. So, likewise, is mind a unity, divided in like manner.'-p. 21.

Q. Can you add anything to this lucid definition?

A. Man appears to be the highest development of nature, and his mind is evolved from this development.'

Q. What is nature?

A. I do not know.

Q. Has there always existed 'grey vesicular matter' evolving mind?

A. No. As Miss Martineau has beautifully said, 'in the old ages of geology, before there was animal existence, there were electric lights, and aroma from vegetation, and solemn music from winds sounding through vast cane-brakes, and among clattering or swinging palm and plantain leaves; but there was then no sentience to grasp and appropriate these products.'—p. 26.

Q. Can you trace the transition from that primeval or early condition of this world, to its present state?

A. 'When the sentience was provided, it probably only enjoyed. After more ages, consciousness followed upon the sentience; or, if consciousness came with the sentience, reflection followed, and the results of material action were naturally, but ignorantly, attributed to preternatural agency.'-p. 26.

Q. How was the sentience provided?

A. We know nothing of fundamental causes, excepting that they are material.

Q. May not the developments of nature be progressive in the future, as they have been in time past?

A. It is possible.

Q. Are you acquainted with any examples in which nature seems to be now pregnant with superhuman developments?

A. I know only the case of Mr. Atkinson, who once thought himself to be all in all.

Q. If nature has developed cane-brakes, and sentience, and philosophers, may it not some time or other develop a God?

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A. That would seem possible.

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Q. Your opinions have been represented as gross materialism. Is the accusation true?

A. No. Bacon says, 'the tangible parts of bodies are stupid things; and the spirits do in effect all.' 'I fully agree with Bacon, and do not consider, for instance, the virtue of the magnet to be in the solid parts, nor the instincts of animals, or thoughts and feelings of man, to be the doings of the solid brain, but of a spiritual condition or body eliminated from or induced by the action of the brain. How otherwise shall we explain the simplest motion ?'-p. 146.

Q. Do you not believe that mind is the product of the brain in motion?

A. Yes.

Q. And that the simplest motion must have its origin in mind or spirit?

A. Certainly.

Q. As, then, neither could exist without the other, which of the two first began to be?

A. I do not know, but suppose nature evolved them both at the same instant.

Q. Can you explain the analogy of thought to light?

A. Thought seems to have a measure or passage in time; but, like light, has no fixedness, and can have none. Light seems to be an induced phenomenon, or motion in a medium or spiritual substance; which, acting on the spirit-body of the brain, evolves its correspondent mind-forms, or what we term sight; and this supposition opens, I think, a great light upon our subject.'— P. 146.

Q. Very great. And now let us turn to another branch of this important subject. You have told me of the grey covering of the brain evolving mind—has the brain itself any mental function?

A. In the brain is cast in stereotype, as it were, the whole nature and philosophy of man, and in a language which exists for all nations and for all times. It is the most wondrous structure, and the most beautiful in arrangement, that men can contemplate. May we approach the subject with reverence.'-p. 24. Q. Does the brain comprise various faculties?

A. Yes, and phrenologists have succeeded tolerably well, though not perfectly, in describing them.

Q. Give an exemplification.

A. Amongst other organs, may be mentioned the comparing organ which unites nature, and the one which divides or analyzes. Beneath this central organ of comparison, lying under Benevolence, is what has been termed by a somnambule, the