On mesmerism.

Russell, John Rutherfurd, 1816-1866

Date:: [between 1800 and 1899]

Credit: On mesmerism. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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$position is that of sleep. Many animals when they fall asleep resume their prenatal attitude by instinct; some seem scarcely to wake, as those bom blind, till some days. Infancy is a pro- longed sleep : and in our progress to second childhood, which too is little else than sleep, it is necessary for the preservation of our faculties that we should nightly return as it were to Nature’s womb, to be quickened for the returning morning of a fresh birth. That there is a living mystery in these long years which we spend in sleep can scarcely admit of a doubt; and perhaps when the “ soul, the body’s guest,” shall go into other regions of existence, the resurrection which is to reunite our separated elements will combine the double experience of all that we have learned in our waking hours, and all that may have been taught us when asleep. The more we ponder upon sleep (the great recurrent move- ment in the epic march of life), the more does its importance as well as its mystery grow upon us. It is an aspect of the law which governs not only all sentient but also all material exis- tence,—the mighty law of alternation : the succession of day and night, of summer and winter, the perpetual repetition of the modified past, which constitutes the present and involves the future. And hence it can hardly be matter of surprise that the infraction of this great law should be attended with most direful consequences. Abstinence from food enfeebles and reduces the frame, but want of sleep disturbs all its functions. It is partial death,—death of our sleeping life. In sleep we return into the great telluric life from which we sprung, for out of the dust of the earth were we created. Not to sleep is to array this life against us; hence sleeplessness is attended with visions of all remembered in after life. Perhaps this idea lies in these verses of In Me- moriam:— “ How fares it with the happy dead ? For here the man is more and more ; But he forgets the days before God shut the doorways of his head. “ The days have vanished tone and tint: And yet, perhaps, the hoarding sense Gives out at times (he knows not whence) A little flash, a mystic hint.”$

On mesmerism.

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