MAYO ON POPULAR SU PERSTITIONS. 4 Arun many years of useful

and active exertions as an anatomist and physiologist, during which he helped to advance our knowledge of the nervous system, Herbert Mayo withdrew to Germany, and gave much attention to animal magnetism, and we believe to some opinions on practical medicine, which, whatever the value of the principle, were presented in an empirical way. In Mayo's hands the practices of charla- tanerie were stripped of dishonesty and imposition, and the philoso- phical truth which might lurk under the exploits of a conjuror was sought after by an ingenious but legitimate mode of induction. That disposition of mind which when it does not succeed we call credulity, might prompt Dr. Mayo to rely too readily on facts insufficiently authenticated, to consider an exceptional case as representing a class of eases, and to assume an hypothesis as a law in deed if not in words : but the tales of the wild and wonderful are carefully analyzed, the facts are stripped of all bewildering matter, presented clearly, and in the order of their importance ; and if the mystery is not satisfac- torily explained, the reader is told where it lies. Extensive reading in the curiosities of medical literature, judgment to select those cases Which strike the attention while they illustrate the principle, and a style both forcible and picturesque, render the discussions attractive, if they do not support the philosophy. The Letters on the Truths contained in Popular Superstitions are based on the principle that "there must be a real foundation for the belief of ages—that there can be no prevalent delusion without a corre- sponding truth." Dr. Mayo's direct object is to discover what this truth is, in the notion of the divining-rod, the superstitious belief in vam- pires, ghosts, and witchcraft, the recorded stories of somnambulism, catalepsy, and other abnormal states of the mind, which Dr. Mayo classes together as originating in some form of trance. A further though more covert purpose is to connect the truth contained in these beliefs or facts 0 Letters on the Truths contained in Bopular Superstitions. By Herbert Mayo, M.D.

Pablkthed by Blackwood.

with the principle-of mesmerism, and- to produre for it a consideration if not a credit which it has ny0 *teed.

The superstition of the divining-rod consists in the belief, extensively prevalent in mining districts,, that some, persons have the faculty of de- tecting veins of metal or underground currents of water, through the means of a hazel twig cut in a particular form and held in a particular way. The detection is made by the gifted unconsciously ; the god spontaneously moving in their bands when they pass over the concealed veins or water. Dr. Mayo, after quoting various facts and investigating the subject minutely, considers that the " likeliest way of accounting-for the pbmnomenon is to suppose that the divining-rod may become the con- ductor of some fluid or force emanating from or disturbed in the body by some terrestrial agency." He thinks that this agency is connected with the new principle which Von Reicheubach discovered in 1845, and which he denominated the " od force" ; the experiments relating to which were conducted in this way.

" In general, persons in health and of a strong constitution are totally insensible to the influence of Von Reichenbach's new force. But all persons the tons of whose health has been lowered by their mode of life, men of sedentary habits, clerks and the like, and women who employ their whole time in needle-work, whose pale complexions show the relaxed and therefore irritable state of their frames—all such, or nearly all, evince more or less susceptibility to the influence I am about to describe.

" Von Reichenbach found, that persons of the classes referred to, when slow passes are made with the poles of a strong magnet moved slowly parallel to the surface,—down the back, for instance, or down the limbs,—and only distant enough just not to touch the clothes feel sensations rather unpleasant than otherwise, as of a light draught of air blown upon them in the path of the magnet. " In the progress of his researches, Von Reichenbach found that his subjects could detect the presence of his new agent by another sense. In the dark they saw dim flames of light issuing and waving from the poles of the magnet. The experiments suggested by this discovery afford satisfactory proofs of the reality of the phmnomena. They were the following. A horse-shoe magnet having been adjusted upon a table with the poles directed upwards, the sensitive subject saw, at the distance of ten feet, the appearance of flames issuing from it. The arma- ture of the magnet—a bar of soft iron—was then applied. Upon this the flames disappeared. They reappeared, she said, as often us the armature was removed from the magnet. "A similar experiment was made with a yet more sensitive subject. This person saw in the first instance flames as the first had done. But when the armature of the magnet was applied, the flames did not disappear; she saw flames still, only they were fainter and their disposition was different. They seemed now to issue from every part of the surface of the magnet equally.

"It is hardly necessary to add, that these experiments were made in a well- darkened room, and that none of the bystanders could discern what the sensitive subjects saw.

Then the following experiment was made. A powerful lens was so placed as that it should concentrate the light of the flames (if real light they were) upon a point of the wall of the room. The patient at once saw the light upon the wall at the right place. And when the inclination of the lens was shifted so as to throw the focus in succession on different points, the sensitive observer never failed in pointing out the right spot. "Next, with the assistance of Herr Schuh, an optician in Vienna, a physical experiment Was made, which seems to remove all doubt of the identity of these to-coannon-eyes.invisible flames with common light. A prepared daguerreotype plate was kept in due opposition to the poles of a strong magnet for sixty-tour hours in perfect darkness. At the expiration of that time, the plate was found to exhibit the fullest influence of light upon its whole surface."

It is not, however, with reference to the divining-rod that Dr. Mayo ascribes so much importance to Von Reichenhach's discovery. He con- ceives that this " od force" may explain the hitherto disregarded because apparently unresolvable facts connected with trance in all its various stages, somnambulism, and catalepsy, as well as the wonders, too readily thrown aside as superstitions or quackery, of vampirism, witchcraft, and mesmerism. A selection of cases, which, whatever else may be thought of them, possess the interest of the possible in the questions of vampirism and trance, excite curiosity in witchcraft, ghosts, and somnambulism, and pass into the strange if not the impossible in catalepsy and mesmerism. The conclusion at which Dr. Mayo arrives is a mixture of theology and assumption on a single datum. "The world, as Socrates taught and Paley argued, must have been framed by a supreme intelligence; in contemplating which., our reason finds no resting-place short of the belief that it is eternal and self-existent. But if the divine and in- finite mind be thus essentially independent of matter, it is possible, nay analogi- cally probable, that the human and finite mind is not less so. While many physiological.pheanomena favour this view, none are known which contravene it.

"I shall assume it to be proved by the above crucial instance, that the mind or soul of one human being can be brought in the natural course of things, and under physiological laws hereafter to be determined, into immediate relation with the mind of another living person.

"If this principle be admitted, it is adequate to explain all the puzzling phw- nomena of real ghosts and of true dreams. For example, the ghostly and hi- tersomnial communications, with which we have as yet dealt, have been announce- ments of the deaths of absent parties. Suppose our new principle brought into play; the soul of the dying person is to be supposed to have come into direct communication with the mind of his friend, with the effect of suggesting his present condition. If the seer be dreaming, the suggestion shapes a correspond- ing dream ; if he be awake, it originates a sensorial illusion. l'o speak figura- tively, merely figuratively, in reference to the circulation of this partial mental obituary, I will suppose that the death of a human being throws a sort of gleam through the spiritual world, which may now and then touch with light some fittingly disposed object, or even two simultaneously if chance have placed them in the right relation; as the twin-spires of a cathedral may be momentarily illu- minated by some far-off flash, which does not break the gloom upon the roofs below. "The same principle is applicable to the explanation of the vampire-visit. The soul (.f the buried man is to be supposed to be brought into communication with his friend's mind. Thence follows, as a sensorial illusion, the apparition of the buried man. Perhaps the visit may have been an instinctive eifAct to draw the attention of his friend to his living grave. I beg,te suggest, that it would riot be an act of superstition now, but of ordinary humane precaution if one dreamed pertinaciously of a recently buried acquamtance, or saw Ma ghost, to take imntediate steps to have the state of the body ascertained."

Taken apart from its illustrations, and curtailed of its full proportions, Dr. Mayo's theory or hypothesis may suffer from this compression in a literary, but not, we believe, in a logical point of view. Tried by the logical test, the verdict, we think, must be " not proven," without going farther than the author's own statement of the ease. There is not a shadow of proof of either of the three hypotheses, except Yon Reichen- bach's "od force "; there is not a trace of connexion between them. Dr. Mayo's theory, we have seen, rests upon the idea of the imma- teriality of the mind, and its independence of the body under cer- tain circumstances. The "od force" is evidently material : it was first discovered by the instrumentality of the magnet, which is known to pos- sess an occult property; and, assuming the optical experiment on the flames to be conclusive, it establishes their materiality beyond a doubt. The difference between the two principles is therefore as wide as the differ- ence between spirit and matter. The most strainedly favourable inter- pretation can only say that we snow the mind is influenced by physical causes ; but no proof of this influence is advanced in the cases in ques- tion, and sometimes the freed spirit is evidently independent of material means of action, operating directly, mind upon mind. The assumed "terrestrial agency" in the ease of the " divining-rod " is material enough, but there is no proof of its analogous connexion with the "eel force," or even of its existence at all.

There is also a deficiency in the minor logic. Dr. Mayo, it seems to 118, receives evidence without sufficient sifting or marshalling ; and if it makes in his favour, with too much credulity. In lesser matters, as well as in the essential principles, he appears to deal too much in assumption. Great, however, is the ingenuity with which he explains the connexion of the popular superstition with the scientific truth; showing how the action of the mind upon the senses, (and, as generally happens in such eases, by the by, of an ignorant, feeble, and ill-taught mind,) endows the spec- tral appearance with the vulgarity or ineptitude which distinguishes ghost stories. In Dr. Mayo's theory, the point—whether to announce a death, or a buried-alive, or a murder—is alone the work of the disembodied spirit; the shape of the visitant, "the habit as he lived," or the true ghostly dress, are the produce of memory and the bodily state of the person visited.

If rational results imply a reasonable principle, then the " od force" is the most reasonable of the three hypotheses ; and it well enough ac- counts for the churchyard ghost or the detection of murder, by means of the light flame visible to the highly sensitive ; for the human form was doubtless imagined by fear, or after the event, in the following and similar stories. At the same time, this phosphorescence may be produced inde- pendently of the "od force."

"There was a cottage in a village I could name, to which a bad report attached: more than one who had slept in it had seen at midnight the radiant apparition of a little child, standing on the hearth-stone. At length suspicion was awakened. The hearth-stone was raised, and there were found buried beneath it the remains of an infant. A story was now divulged how the last tenant and a female of the village had abruptly quitted the neighbourhood. The ghost was real and sig- nificant enough. "But here is a still better instance from a trustworthy German work, P. Kieffer's Archives. The narrative was communicated by Herr Ehrman of Stras- burg, son-in-law of the well-known writer Pfeffel, from whom he received it. "The ghost-seer was a young candidate for orders, eighteen years of age, of the name of Billing. He was known to have very excitable nerves, had already ex- perienced sensorial illusions, and was particularly sensitive to the presence of hu- man remains, which made him tremble and shudder in all his limbs. Pfeffel, being blind, was accustomed to take the arm of this young man; and they walked thus together in Pfeffel's garden, near Colmar. At one spot in the garden, Pfeffel remarked that his companion's arm gave a sudden start, as if he had received an electric shock. Being asked what was the matter, Billing replied, 'Nothing.' But on their going over the same spot again, the same effect recurred. The young man, being pressed to explain the cause of his disturbance, avowed that it arose from a peculiar sensation, which he always experienced when in the vicinity of human remains; that it was his impression a human body must be interred there; but that if Pfeffel would return with him at night, he should be able to speak with greater confidence. Accordingly, they went together to the garden when it was dark; and as they approached the spot, Billing observed a faint light over it. At ten paces from it he stopped, and would go no farther; for he saw hovering over if, or self-supported in the air, its feet only a few inches from the ground, a luminous female figure, nearly five feet high, with the right arm folded on her breast, the left hanging by her side. When Pfeffel himself stepped forward and placed himself about where the figure appeared to be, Billing said it was now on his right hand, now on his left, now behind, now before him. When Pfeffel cut the air with his stick, it seemed as if it went through and divided a light flame, which then united again. The visit, repeated the next night in company with some of Pfeffers relatives, gave the same result. They did not see anything. Pfeffel then, unknown to the ghost-seer, had the ground dug up ; when there was found at some depth, beneath a layer of quicklime, a human body in progress of decomposition. The remains were removed and the earth carefully replaced. Three days afterwards, Billing, from whom this whole proceeding had been kept con- cealed, was again led to the spot by Pfeffel. He walked over it now without ex- periencing any unusual impression whatever. "The explanation of this mysterious pbmnomenon has been but recently arrived at. The discoveries of Von Reichenbach, of which I gave a sketch in the first letter, announce the principle on which it depends. Among these discoveries is the fact that the od force makes itself visible as a dim light or waving flame to highly sensitive subjects. Such persons in the dark see flames issuing from the poles of magnets and crystals. Von Reichenbach eventually discovered that the od force is distributed universally although in varying quantities. But among the causes which excite its evolution, one of the most active is chemical decom- position. Then happening to remember Pfeffers ghost-story, it occurred to Von Reichenbach that what Billing had seen was possibly od light. To test the sound- ness of this conjecture, Miss Reichel, a very sensitive subject, was taken at night to an extensive burying-ground near Vienna, where interments take place daily, and there are many thousand graves. The result did not disappoint Von Reichen- bach's expectations. Whithersoever Miss Reichel turned her eyes, she saw masses of flame. This appearance manifested itself most about recent graves. About very old ones it was not visible. She described the appearance as resem- bling less bright flame than fiery vapour, something between fog and flame. In several instances the light extended four feet in height above the ground. When Miss Reichei placed her hand on it, it seemed to her involved in a cloud of fire. When she stood in it, it came up to her throat. She expressed no alarm, being ac- customed to the appearance. " The mystery has thus been entirely solved. For it is evident that the spec- tral character of the luminous apparition in the two instances which I have nar- rated had been supplied by the seers themseves. So the superstition has vanished; but, as usual, it veiled a truth."

Our extracts will convey an idea of the manner and style of Dr. Mayo's book; which is something more than a collection of strange stories or in-

genions hypotheses. To establish his theories, is what Dr. Mayo does not succeed in ; but it is difficult to read his letters without having routine notions shaken, or without feeling that there is a good deal yet to be done in the philosophy of body and soul.