s asked to explain this extraordinary occurrence, he could offer no
other explanation than that "he saw them coming, and heard them talk on
their journey."[271-1]

Many tales such as these have been recorded by travellers, and however
much they may shock our sense of probability, as well-authenticated
exhibitions of a power which sways the Indian mind, and which has ever
prejudiced it so unchangeably against Christianity and civilization,
they cannot be disregarded. Whether they too are but specimens of
refined knavery, whether they are instigations of the Devil, or whether
they must be classed with other facts as illustrating certain obscure
and curious mental faculties, each may decide as the bent of his mind
inclines him, for science makes no decision.

Those nervous conditions associated with the name of Mesmer were nothing
new to the Indian magicians. Rubbing and stroking the sick, and the
laying on of hands, were very common parts of their clinical procedures,
and at the initiations to their societies they were frequently
exhibited. Observers have related that among the Nez Perces of Oregon,
the novice was put to sleep by songs, incantations, and "certain passes
of the hand," and that with the Dakotas he would be struck lightly on
the breast at a preconcerted moment, and instantly "would drop prostrate
on his face, his muscles rigid and quivering in every fibre."[272-1]

There is no occasion to suppose deceit in this. It finds its parallel in
every race and every age, and rests on a characteristic trait of certain
epochs and certain men, which leads them to seek the divine, not in
thoughtful contemplation on the laws of the universe and the facts of
self-consciousness, but in an entire immolation of the latter, a sinking
of their own individuality in that of the spirits whose alliance they
seek. This is an outgrowth of that ignoring of the universality of Law,
which belongs to the lower stages of enlightenment.[273-1] And as this
is never done with impunity, but with iron certainty brings its
punishment with it, the study of the mental conditions thus evoked, and
the results which follow them, offers a salutary subject of reflection
to the theologian as well as the physician. For these examples of
nervous pathology are identical in kind, and alike in consequences,
whether witnessed in the primitive forests of the New World, among the
convulsionists of St. Medard, or in the excited scenes of a religious
revival i