served to
impose respect and to inspire trust.

CHAPTER II.

I had been about six years at L---- when I became suddenly involved in
a controversy with Dr. Lloyd. Just as this ill-fated man appeared at the
culminating point of his professional fortunes, he had the imprudence
to proclaim himself not only an enthusiastic advocate of mesmerism as a
curative process, but an ardent believer of the reality of somnambular
clairvoyance as an invaluable gift of certain privileged organizations.
To these doctrines I sternly opposed myself,--the more sternly, perhaps,
because on these doctrines Dr. Lloyd founded an argument for the
existence of soul, independent of mind, as of matter, and built
thereon a superstructure of physiological fantasies, which, could it
be substantiated, would replace every system of metaphysics on which
recognized philosophy condescends to dispute.

About two years before he became a disciple rather of Puysegur than
Mesmer (for Mesmer hard little faith in that gift of clairvoyance of
which Puysegur was, I believe, at least in modern times, the first
audacious asserter), Dr. Lloyd had been afflicted with the loss of a
wife many years younger than himself, and to whom he had been tenderly
attached. And this bereavement, in directing the hopes that consoled
him to a world beyond the grave, had served perhaps to render him more
credulous of the phenomena in which he greeted additional proofs of
purely spiritual existence. Certainly, if, in controverting the notions
of another physiologist, I had restricted myself to that fair antagonism
which belongs to scientific disputants anxious only for the truth, I
should need no apology for sincere conviction and honest argument; but
when, with condescending good-nature, as if to a man much younger than
himself, who was ignorant of the phenomena which he nevertheless denied,
Dr. Lloyd invited me to attend his seances and witness his cures, my
amour propre became aroused and nettled, and it seemed to me necessary
to put down what I asserted to be too gross an outrage on common-sense
to justify the ceremony of examination. I wrote, therefore, a small
pamphlet on the subject, in which I exhausted all the weapons that irony
can lend to contempt. Dr. Lloyd replied; and as he was no very skilful
arguer, his reply injured him perhaps more than my assault. Meanwhile,
I had made some inquiries as to the moral character of his favourite
clairvoyants. I imagined that I h