All mesmerically-produced phenomena are the consequence of the passes. The immediate effect of the passes is de-electrisation of the nerves, that is, of their contents, which leaves them polarised (as is the case in natural sleep), but more intensely than is effected by the comatose flow. In the ordinary condition, the contents of the nerves may be likened to milky water in a barometer tube; in natural sleep, to the same, with a less degree of milkiness—the latter subsiding from the ends to the middle portion of the water; and in the clairvoyant condition of the nerves, to the milkiness having so completely subsided as to leave the water above and below the middle of the tube transparent. In the ordinary condition, the nervous fluid is clogged, as it were, with intermixed electric matter, which, by marring the regular continuity of the fluid from without to the brain, reduces in some degree the exciting pressure on the brain, which prevents the function of the fluid being employed to its utmost. In this encumbered state, the fluid may be said to act on the brain, as the clapper when muffled on a bell. Still the excited pressure is sufficiently strong, and the mental result sufficiently distinct for all human purposes. When to the clairvoyant degree the nerves have been denuded of impeding electric matter, the nervous fluid is enabled to act on the brain as if unmuffled; and as its continuity from the orifices of the retina through space is not in any manner altered, so, to the altered electric condition, mesmerically effected, on the contents of the nerves between their orifices and the brain, we must attribute all mesmerically produced phenomena; and without supposing that the brain is quickened into a higher degree of sensibility, or that any one of its various organs has acquired some exalted degree of psychologic ability.
That long vision and opaque vision should be consequences of cleansing, as it were, the nerves of intercepting minus-pressure matter, is nothing surprising, it is as removing dust from the window to better our vision: the physiology is traceable, and the psychology not more incomprehensible than its hourly occurrence in a minor degree, to which, as sensible effects, we are indebted for all we know, and by which we abide, without inquiry into their nature or origin; so perfect is the design of Nature in our make for supplying all that is requisite to the comfort and enjoyment of man in his present state of existence.
Long vision
, during the clairvoyant state, or the recognition of objects greatly remote by the sensation each promotes, has its wonder much more in the nature of the medium of space than in the familiar mental effect. The optically promoted sensation is proof that the external object, were it at the antipodes, is in mediate connection with not only the nervous fluid of the retina, but the brain. Long and ordinary vision have the same theory: in both states the same chromatic cerebral organ is excited by the nervous fluid; in both the nervous fluid is continuous from the brain to the external body; and in both the object perceived is the sensation of colour. That the eye-ball lenses are concerned in long and opaque, as in short vision, however in the two former, the eyes may be bandaged (to satisfy the desire of spectators, otherwise useless, if not worse,) is obvious, from the knowledge of form being connected with the sensation, as in every instance of optically-excited perception.
By the passes, the nervous fluid is freed from the visual intercepting electric matter; which matter, like the colouring matter in stained glass, renders the continuity of the visual medium or fluid within the optic nerve impaired.
To account for the phenomenon of much longer than ordinary vision, there is nothing in the mesmeric case to effect the difference, or refer to, but the de-electrised condition of the nervous fluid. From which it would seem that the visual line from the most remote object, is always as continuous to the brain as from one within arm's length before the face; and that the degree of cerebral exciting pressure on the longer line is rendered equally efficacious, now, that the electric impediment has been removed from the nervous fluid; hence, that the normal intermixed quantity of electric matter with the nervous fluid prevents us being clairvoyant at all times, is reasonable to conclude.
Opaque vision
, or the "seeing through opaque bodies," is not the absurdity so generally imagined when judged and reasoned on according to the true principles of visual perception: the facts of clairvoyance place the absurdity on the denier.
As the medium of space furnishes all the nerves with the true and only cerebral exciting fluid, which is necessarily all-pervading, and proved to be so by the auditory sense, or "hearing through stone walls," the possibility of seeing through such bodies is made manifest, and clairvoyantly, has been proved. Misled by the idea that the eye-balls look through solid glass, yet cannot look through a stone, to doubt and deny is pardonable; yet nothing else is requisite, than that the visual medium shall be continuous from the object to the brain, no matter how many opaque objects lie between, for the perception being excited, and promoted by the remote object: the object perceived is the sensation of this or that colour, as in transparent vision. It is no ordinary circumstance, that of "seeing through opaque bodies;" neither is it an ordinary circumstance, the extreme de-electrised condition of the nervous fluid, on which the extra-ordinary of the phenomenon depends. In removing the partial opacity of a crystal by means of fire, the hindrance to the visual continuity, electric matter, is displaced; but as no such electric displacement from a stone wall is effected or practicable, while to the clairvoyant the continuity is as were there no electric impediment in the wall, is proof additional that the medium of space, the common cerebral exciting cause, pervades all things, the human body included, and hence the being in Report.
Now that mesmeric practice and proof have stifled all open opposition, by the influential ignorant, to the surprising truths of the science, that all persons cannot be mesmerised to the clairvoyant stage, is in nowise prejudicial to mesmerism, or to the science of the economy being intimately connected with medical practice; neither are occasional failures by the clairvoyant, especially in trial tests, some of which exhibit samples of complicated confusion, as if for the purpose of suppression, instead of laudably exalting the all-important science of mesmerism. Had the very liberal offer of a hundred pounds been under less complicated conditions, the bank-note most certainly would have been deciphered and changed hands. Had the note been spread open, while enclosed between two plates of sheet-iron, and then read by the clairvoyant, the test would have been sufficient to convince the most steady, sturdy, staunch unbeliever, and the dÉnouement affirmative to every dispassionate observer. But from being folded line upon line, letter on letter, at least three deep, the misarrangement destroyed most effectually all reading order. A Newtonian would say, that, "the commixed rays proceeding from the several overlaid typographic characters, and from the lines placed tier over tier, could never form the image of even a single letter on the retina, with anything resembling legible clearness;" therefore the trial must fail most inevitably.
