Herbert Mayo

“ The state which thus passed for death and led to such fatal consequences, apart from superstition, deserves our serious consideration; for, although of very rare, it is of continual occurrence, and society is not sufficiently on its guard against a contingency so dreadful when overlooked. When the nurse or the doctor has announced that all is over—that the valued friend or relative has breathed his last—no doubt crosses any one’s mind of the reality of the sad event. ”

“ Your skepticism will abate pretty considerably when you see him stealthily entering your room, yet are powerless under the fascination of his fixed and leaden eye—when you are conscious, as you lie motionless with terror, of his nearer and nearer approach—when you feel his face, fresh with the smell of the grave, bent over your throat, while his keen teeth make a fine incision in your jugular, preparatory to his commencing his plain but nutritive repast. ”

“ Thus comes out the practical importance of the question, how is it to be known that the body is no longer alive?
The entire absence of the ordinary signs of life is insufficient to prove the absence of life. The body may be externally cold; the pulse not be felt; breathing may have ceased; no bodily motion may occur; the limbs may be stiff (through spasm) ; the sphincter muscles relaxed; no blood may flow from an opened vein; the eyes may have become glassy; there may be partial mortification to offend the sense with the smell of death; and yet the body may be alive. ”

“ To speak with more precision, it is a power we have of controlling our thoughts, which we drill to warn us whenever the suggested ideas conflict with our experience or our principles.
Then of sleep. We catch glimpses of its nature at the moments of falling asleep and of waking. When it is the usual time for sleep, if our attention happen to be livelily excited, it is in vain we court sleep. When we are striving to contend against the sense of overwhelming fatigue, what we feel is, that we can no longer command our attention. Then we are lost, or are asleep. Then the head and body drop forwards ”

“ It is metaphysically and physically certain, that when we maintain one and the same bodily posture or gesture, as in standing, sitting, or holding out the hand, whatever be the seeming continuousness and unity of the effort, the posture or gesture is really maintained only by a series of rapidly succeeding efforts. What is more likely than that, in such a continual renewing of voluntary actions, our fancy, or the sympathy between our will and our thoughts, should give a bias to the results, even when we most try to neutralize its influence? ”

“ It is evident that the insect uses the same power in realizing its ordinary special conception, when the result displays equal perfectness. And the question even crosses one’s mind, Are the seemingly arbitrary plans really arbitrary?—may they not equally represent a highest type of design? But, be that as it may, the intuition of insects, as we now apprehend it, no longer stands an isolated phenomenon. The lucid cataleptic cannot less directly communicate with the source of truth, as she proves by foreseeing future events. ”

“ Divine Wisdom goes further, and reveals to us that knowledge is a good and virtuous thing, while ignorance is stamped by the same seal as sinful; or how otherwise can we interpret the course of history and human experience, which proves that, by the very constitution of our being, and the laws impressed upon the moral and physical world, increase of knowledge contributes to promote general and individual well-doing and happiness, while ignorance never fails to be followed by the contrary penal consequences? ”

“ They had, in fact, exactly the same appearance as Nicolai’s visiters.60 “Lest any one should call this an illusion, or imaginary perception, it is to be understood that I am accustomed to see them when myself perfectly wide awake, and in full exercise of my observation. The speech of an angel, or of a spirit, sounds like and as loud as that of a man; but it is not heard by the bystanders. The reason is, that the speech of an angel, or a spirit, finds entrance first into a man’s thoughts, and reaches his organs of hearing from within.” ”

“ The soul of 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 effort to draw the attention of his friend to his living grave. I beg to suggest that it would not be an act of superstition now, but of ordinary humane precaution, if one dreamed pertinaciously of a recently buried acquaintance, or saw his ghost, to take immediate steps to have the state of the body ascertained. ”

“ Then, what is Mesmerism?
The object of the inventor of the art was to cure diseases through the influence of a new force brought by him to bear upon the human frame.
Talent, for philosophy or business, is the power of seeing what is yet hidden from others. As the eyes of some animals are fitted to see best in the dark, so the mental vision of some original minds prefers exercising itself on obscure and occult subjects. Whoever indulges this turn will certainly pass for a charlatan ”

“ Pointing with the hands to the pit of the stomach, laying the hands upon the shoulders, and slowly moving them along the arms down to the hands, the whole with the utmost quietude and composure on the part of the operator, will dispel this oppression.
And the interest of the first sitting is confined to the process of awakening the patient, which is one of the most marvellous phenomena of the whole. The operator lays his two thumbs on the space between the eyebrows, and as it were vigorously smooths or irons the eyebrows, rubbing them from within outwards seven or eight times. ”

“ I have analyzed trance in its character of a spontaneous pathological phenomenon. I have examined its principal features as they present themselves when it is induced by mesmerism. But facts have been brought forward by Mr. Braid, which seem to establish that, in some highly susceptible persons, trance may be brought on at will in another way, by their own indirect efforts, apart from external influences:—as, for instance, by straining the eyes upwards, the attention being kept some time concentrated on the object or the effort. ”