Who would dream, indeed, of comparing Wesley with a
Cuvier, Hufeland, Blumenbach, Eschenmeyer, Reil, &c.? Were I asked, what
_I_ think, my answer would be,--that the evidence enforces scepticism and a
_non liquet_;--too strong and consentaneous for a candid mind to be
satisfied of its falsehood, or its solvibility on the supposition of
imposture or casual coincidence;--too fugacious and unfixable to support
any theory that supposes the always potential, and, under certain
conditions and circumstances, occasionally active, existence of a
correspondent faculty in the human soul. And nothing less than such an
hypothesis would be adequate to the _satisfactory_ explanation of the
facts;--though that of a _metastasis_ of specific functions of the nervous
energy, taken in conjunction with extreme nervous excitement, _plus_ some
delusion, _plus_ some illusion, _plus_ some imposition, _plus_ some chance
and accidental coincidence, might determine the direction in which the
scepticism should vibrate. Nine years has the subject of Zoo-magnetism been
before me. I have traced it historically, collected a mass of documents in
French, German, Italian, and the Latinists of the sixteenth century, have
never neglected an opportunity of questioning eye-witnesses, _ex.
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