s. If, then, there be a
mesmeric medium, which, being a purely hypothetic creation, cannot be
disproved, its requisites must be so totally at variance with the
requisites of ordinary ethereal media, that none of the rules which can
be applied to this can be applied to that. The arguments of Mr Townshend
depend on analogy, where there is no analogy.

Many of the objects of vision, all indeed by which reading is effected,
are purposely constructed to suit the peculiar organization of the
eye--they are artifices specially appropriated to given sensations; thus
_black_ letters are printed on _white_ paper, because experience has
told us that black reflects no light, while white reflects all the
incident light. If we wish to read by another sense, we adapt our object
to such a sense; thus, for those who read by the finger, raised letters
are prepared, differing from the matrix in position but not in colour;
if we read by the ear, we address it by sounds and not by forms or
colours; and it would be far from impracticable to read by smell or
taste, by associating given odours or given tastes with given ideas.

In all this, however, each sense requires a peculiar education and long
training--it is only by constant association of the word _table_ with
the thing _table_, that we connect the two ideas; but mesmeric
clairvoyance not only conveys things as things in all their proper forms
and colours, (p. 164,) without the intervention of the usual senses, but
it also dispenses with education or association, or instantly adapts to
a new sense the education hitherto specially and only adapted to
another.

Thus the mesmeric medium should, and does, according to Mr Townshend,
(pp. 97, 99, 101,) convey to the person accustomed to read by the eye,
ideas and perceptions which he has hitherto associated with the
sight--to him accustomed to read by touch, ideas associated with
touch--and so of the rest, and that not of sight or touch of the object
itself, but of a mere arbitrary symbol of the object.

_Table_ of five letters or forms--_table_ of two sounds, bearing no
resemblance to these letters or forms, or to the thing--_table_ but a
mere conventional substitute for the purpose of human convenience, yet
by the all-potent mesmeric medium, for which they have not been
previously framed, are definitely conveyed, and produce the require
perception and the required association.

We trust we need go no further to show that mesmeric clairv