h the first
half has been engaged in weaving. When the author departs from the
narrative of facts, and endeavours to render those facts consistent with
reason and experience, we see the one-sided bias of his mind--we see
that he is not a judge but an advocate; and the faith which we should
repose on the circumstantial narrative of a gentleman, becomes changed
into the courtesy with which we listen to an honourable but deceived
enthusiast.

If the utilitarian school has done harm by its hasty attempts to reduce
every thing to rule and to the dominion of human reason, no stronger
proof than this book need be given of the evils to which the opposite
extreme of transcendental philosophy has given rise. As an instance of
the fallacies to which one-sided philosophic views may lead, Mr
Townshend says, that if asked of what use is the eye if we can see
without it, he might answer, "To show us how to make a camera obscura."
The case is put illustratively, and we are far from wishing to take it
literally to the author's disadvantage; but, in setting at nought the
ordinary and sufficient reasoning on this subject, the author himself is
obliged to adopt a similar but weaker line of argument. Unfortunate it
is, that even in philosophy the judicial character is so rare; it is
vainly imagined that error may be counteracted by antagonist error; and
because neutrality is too often the companion of impotence, impartiality
is supposed to be synonymous with neutrality.

It will be seen from the above, that Mr Townshend has failed to convince
us that all the "facts in mesmerism" are facts; and certainly if he has
failed, the herd of peripatetic lecturers[3] on the so-called science
are not likely to have succeeded; but, although unconvinced of the
marvellous, we are by no means indisposed to believe some of the
abnormal phenomena of mesmerism. We have witnessed several mesmeric
exhibitions--we have never seen any effect produced which was
contradictory to the possible of human experience, in which collusion or
delusion was fairly negatived. We insist on our right to doubt, to
disbelieve. The more startling the proposition, the more rigorous should
be the proof; we have never seen the tests which are applied to the most
trifling novelty in physical science applied to mesmeric _clairvoyance_,
and withstood. The advocates of it challenge enquiry in print, but they
shrink from, or sink under, experiment.

In endeavouring to analyse the work