Litchfield enquirer., 1879-07-03
From Scribners MonthlyJ THE DELUSI0NS OF CLAIRVOY-
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HE UELUS1UNS UF CladAhSO4-
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 Probably nine out of ten of the intelligent people of this country believe more or less firmly that certain persons, in peculiar states of the body or mind, have the power of clair voyance or clear seeing, or, as it IS sometimes called of second sight. Just what this power is, or rather what is claimed for it, cannot be stated in word, for the reason that it is vague and uncertain, varying with the person mak- ing the claim but in general it is regarded as kind of sixth sense not given to all individ4 uals nor to any individual at all times, but de xeloped usually. if not always, in the state Of trance. Those who are favored above their fellow -mortals by this special gift of heaven can tell the past and predict the future histo- ries of those with whom they are eas rapport, and, more specifically, can find lost persons and property, diagnose andscure obscure dis eases without seeing the patient, and, in some instances, become the privileged bearers .of messages from the world of spirits. M q Clairyoyance is the daughter of animal mag- netism, winch IS the one great deiusion of our l time and especially of our country, and IS in deed to the nineteenth century what witchcratt was to the sixteenth or seventeenth. The chief fact of interest connected with this de- fusion of clarvoyance as well as with It's par ent, animal magnetism, is that at the present time it prevails more widely among the thoughtful and cultured class than among the ignorant and degraded; among the latter the active belief in this delusion is unconsciously dying out those who consult clairvoyants ride in carriages, dress in silks, faces and dia- monds, attend popular churches, and what is most remarkable, are highly intelligent in lit erature, in art and even in science. '".. In this respect. clairveyance is repeating the history of witchcraft, which as MT. Lecky for cibly points out, was abandoned by the igno- rant and the lowly, while yet scholars and gentlemen, jurlsts and philosophers and even theologians such as Erasmus and Luther, Mat thew Hale and Cotton Mather loved it, cher ished it and fought for it.
 The position that physicians and men of sci ence have held in regard to these unscientific claims is one of passive but not active rejec- tien; they have been unwilling to declare with certainty that such phenomena may not occur, although not regarding them as in any sense proved, in spite of the testimony in their favor; consequently these claims have not been formally received into science, nor have they been formally expelled from. science 1; rather they have been kept on the anxious seat, in kind of probation, while all the time the suspicion has been growing and extending that the higher science of the future would cast them out altogether, just as the science of the past and present has already cast out the claims of wtchcraft, alchemy, astrology, elixir of life, squaring the circle and perpetual mo- tion. It is but few years since paper was read at meeting of the New York State Med ical Society by one of the prominent members, advocating, in calm and earnest language, all the claims that it is the object of this essay to refute and yet not word of protest was of fered The silence that followed tue reading of the paper was quite far from consent but, at the present day, the reading of such pro- duction would be met by facts and arguments of most convincing character, for the advance of knowledge in the medical profession is away from these and all allied claims.* Med ical science has been reconstructed since the committees of the French Academy made their non-expert experiments on the subject of clair yOyance and mesmerism. F.
 Outside of negroes and 'spiritualists, there are probably not thousand persons in this country who have even lingering faith in witchcraft; on the other hand, there are prob- ably not thousand intelligent persons in the country-not even excepting physicians and all classes of professional scientific and litera- " men-who would be willing to state, with absolute pOsitiveness, that clairvoyance and animal magnetism were utter delusions that there was nothing in nthem whatever that could uOb Ut tA pNtiIcu III lull uctdll Dy kuOWu puJS- illogical laws and by trickery; and yet, 8 person who should make such a positive state ment would be quite right and would be sus- tained by the future. No member of the hu- man race, man or woman, child or adult in trance or out of trance, or in any phase of health or disease, ever possessed, even for one moment, the feeblest degree of clairvoyant or second-sight power.
 It is known by established and formulated biological law that no human being has, or can have, any quality different in kind from those that belong to the race in general. To this law there can be no exception. What the law of gravity is to the claim of the vortices |; what the Copernican theory is to the claims of those who believe in the f1atness of the earth 1; what chemistry is to alchemy; what astrono- my is to astrology; what mathematics is to the claim ot squaring the circle; what the law of conservation of force is to the claim of per petual motion; what general physiology and pathology of the involuntary life are to spirit ism, m,-such is the above biological law to the claims of clairyoyance, prophecy, and mind- reading; dispreving them absolutely and be- yond the need of investigation, indeed, to such degree as to make investigation unsci- entifc, as we'll as unnecessary. In this way, science, or organized knowledge, by discover ing and formulating the unalterable laws of
 
 endeavor, is able to predict with unfailing pre- cision not only what will happen, but what cannot happen. Science thus becomes the re- al and only clairvoyant only through the eyes of science is it given to man to read the fu- ture .....e. ~..
 The amount of human testimony in favor of the claim of clairvoyance is, it must be allow cd, enormous and imposing, almost equal to that in favor of the claims of witchcraft, as- trology, and the elixir of life but in science average human testimony is of no value A good example of the worth--or rather, of the worthlessness-of popular beliefs in scientific matters is the superstition, almost universal in this country, even among the very best classes, that it is the custom of surgeons to take out the eye and replace it in the socket. Oculists tell me that their patients sometimes declare that they have seen this operation per- formed, and they will not be convinced to the contrary by the statement of experts that it is as easy to cut of the head and replace it, as to detach the eye from it's vascular and ner- veus connection and put it back in its socket. A medical friend tells me that he was once earnestly urged to take out patients liver and scrape it i; and, when he demurred against attempting such an impossible operation, he was informed that it could be done, that she had seen it done, or, at least, knew of it's be- ing done it the case of one of her friends; and, as usual in such cases, she persisted in her belief. !, Superstition is always skeptical. Those who consult clairvoyantsare in logic not believers, unbelieyers. since they doubt the teachings of science, distrnst the necessary conclusions of the trained intellect, reject or ignore inevitable truth, refuse obedience to the empire of law, and take up arms against Nature itself
 To the eye of the physiologist, who is famil- jar with the science of deusions, all the claims built upon alleged clairvoyance are not even mysterious; they are as transparent as glass and as frail. Science sees right through them, and it has but to touch them and they shiver ! to atoms. The practical successof clairvoyants, pub lie and private, is the result of these three fac tors: |. guess work reduced to a science and an art, a cOincidences. and 8 trickery.