Blasphemous Conclusion of Mainauduc's Lectures.—The Effects which he produced explained.—Disappearance of the Imposture.
The conclusion of the extraordinary book from whence I have condensed the summary of this prodigious quackery, is even more extraordinary and more daring than the quackery itself. It may be transcribed without offence to religion, for every catholic will regard its atrocious impiety with due abhorrence.
"I flatter myself," says this man at the close of his lectures, "you are now convinced that this science is of too exalted a nature to be trifled with or despised; and I fondly hope that even the superficial specimen which you have thus far received has given you room to suppose it, not a human device, held out for the sportive gratification of the idle moment, but a divine call from the affectionate creating Parent, inviting his rebellious children by every persuasive, by every tender motive, to renounce the destructive allurements of earthly influence, and to perform the duties which he sent his beloved Son into the world to inculcate, as the only and effectual conditions on which the deluded spirit in man should escape future punishment. The apostles received and accepted of those terms; disciples out of number embraced the doctrine, and by example, by discourse, and by cures, influenced the minds of the unthinking multitude, absorbed in sin, and rioting in obstinate disobedience.—Again, the Almighty Father deigns to rouse his children from that indifference to their impending fate, into which the watchful enemy omits no opportunity of enticing them. To lead our Saviour from his duty, the tempter showed and offered him all this world's grandeur;—so he daily in some degree does to us. Our Saviour spurned him with contempt, and so must we. Our blessed Saviour, whose spirit was a stranger to sin, cured by perfect spiritual and physical innocence, and by an uninterrupted dependence on his Great, Omnipotent, Spiritual Father. He never failed. His chosen apostles cured by relinquishing this world and following him. We have but one example, that I can recollect, of their having failed, and then Christ told them what was necessary to ensure success. The disciples and the followers of the apostles performed many cures, but how far they were checquered by failures I am not informed. Paracelsus, Sir Kenelm Digby, Sir Robert Fludd, and several others, experienced sufficient power in themselves to verify the words of our Saviour; but were soon deprived of what was only lent to urge them to seek for the great original cause. "Verily, verily," said Christ, "the works which I do shall ye do also; and greater works than these shall ye do, for I go unto my father." Valentine Greatrakes, by obeying the instructions imparted to him in visions, performed many cures; but ceasing to look up to the source, and giving way to medical importunity, he administered drugs, and could not expect success. Gasner, a moral and religious man, performed many cures; he was shut up in a convent, through the ignorance of his superiors, and the superstitious blindness of the age he lived in; thence his progress was trivial, though his dawnings seemed to promise much. Mesmer pillaged the subject from Sir Robert Fludd, and found to a certainty the existence of the power: undisposed to attend to our Saviour's information, he preferred loadstones and magnetic ideas to the service of the Great Author; and after performing several accidental cures, his magnetism and his errors shared the fate of his predecessors. Doctor D'Eslon, his partner, though a man of strong reason and impartiality, ascribed the power which he experienced to the physical will of man; and after performing some cures, he fell asleep. At length, after so many centuries of ignorance, it has graciously pleased the Almighty Father to draw aside the veil, and disclose his sacred mysteries to this favoured generation. And when I shall be called home, it will, I hope, appear, that for a bright and happy certainty of serving my God, and living with my Saviour, I pointed out to you, my brethren, the Almighty's real science, and that path to Heaven, which Christ, the only perfect and successful one of this list, left to mankind, as his last testament, and inestimable dying gift."[19] This portentous blasphemy shows to what excess any kind of impiety may be carried on in this country, provided it does not appear as a direct attack upon religion. So infamous an impostor would in our country quickly have been silenced by the Holy Office, or, to speak more truly, the salutary dread of the Holy Office would have restrained him within decent bounds. Was he pure rogue undiluted with any mixture of enthusiasm, or did he, contrary to the ordinary process, begin in rogue, and end in enthusiast?
It is a common observation, that a man may tell a story of his own invention so often that he verily believes it himself at last. There is more than this in the present case. Mainauduc pretended to possess an extraordinary power over the bodily functions of others: it was easy to hire patients at first who would act as he prescribed, and much was to be expected afterwards from credulity; but that it should prove that he actually did possess this power in as great a degree as he ever pretended, over persons not in collusion with him, nor prepared to be affected by their previous belief, but unprejudiced, incredulous, reasonable people, philosophical observers who went to examine and detect the imposition, in sound health of body and mind, was more than he expected, and perhaps more than he could explain. This actually was the case; they who went to hear him with a firm and rational disbelief, expecting to be amused by the folly of his patients, were themselves thrown into what is called the crisis: his steady looks and continued gesticulations arrested their attention, made them dizzy, deranged the ordinary functions of the system, and fairly deprived them for a time of all voluntary power, and all perception.
How dangerous a power this was, and to what detestable purposes it might be applied, need not be explained. The solution is easy and convincing, but it by no means follows that he himself comprehended it. If we direct our attention to the involuntary operations of life within us, they are immediately deranged. Think for a minute upon the palpitation of the heart, endeavour to feel the peristaltic motion, or breathe by an act of volition, and you disturb those actions which the life within us carries on unerringly, and as far as we can perceive unconsciously. Any person may make the experiment, and satisfy himself. The animal magnetists kept up this unnatural state of attention long enough by their treatment to produce a suspension of these involuntary motions, and consequent insensibility.
In a country like this, where the government has no discretionary power of interfering, to punish villany, and of course where whosoever can invent a new roguery may practise it with impunity, till a new law be made to render it criminal, Mainauduc might have gone on triumphantly, and have made himself the head of a sect, or even a religion, had the times been favourable. But politics interfered, and took off the attention of all the wilder and busier spirits. He died, and left a woman to succeed him in the chair. The female caliph either wanted ability to keep the believers together, or having made a fortune thought it best to retire from trade. So the school was broken up. Happily for some of the disciples, who could not exist without a constant supply of new miracles to feed their credulity, Richard Brothers appeared, who laid higher claims than Mainauduc, and promised more wonderful things. But of him hereafter.
