481. Do spirits play a part in the phenomena exhibited by the individuals designated under the name of convulsionaries.?

"Yes, a very important one, as does also the agent that you call magnetism, whether employed by human beings or by spirits; for this agent is the original source of those phenomena. But charlatanism has often exaggerated those effects, and made them a matter of speculation, which has brought them into ridicule."

– What is generally the nature of the spirits who help to produce phenomena of this kind?

"Of slight elevation. Do you suppose that spirits of high degree would waste their time in such a way?"

482. How can a whole population be suddenly thrown into the abnormal state of convulsions and crises.'

"Through sympathy. Moral dispositions are sometimes exceedingly contagious. You are not so ignorant of the effects of human magnetism as not to understand this, and also the part that certain spirits would naturally take in such occurrences, through sympathy with those by whom they are produced."

Among the strange peculiarities remarked in convulsionaries, several are evidently identical with those of which somnambulism and mesmerism offer numerous examples – viz., physical insensibility, thought-reading, sympathetic transmission or sensations, etc. It is therefore impossible to doubt that these crisiacs are in a sort of waking somnambulism, determined by the influence which they unwittingly exercise upon each other. They are at once mesmerisers and mesmerised, unconsciously to themselves.

483. What is the cause of the physical insensibility sometimes remarked in convulsionaries, and sometimes, also, in other persons, when subjected to the most atrocious tortures?

"In some cases it is simply an effect of human magnetism, which acts upon the nervous system in the same manner as do certain substances. In other cases, mental excitement deadens the sensibility of the organism, the life seeming to retire from the body in order to concentrate itself in the spirit. Have you not observed that, when the spirit is intensely occupied with any matter, the body neither feels, nor sees, nor hears?

The excitement of fanaticism and enthusiasm often offer, on the part of persons subjected to a violent death, examples of a calmness and coolness that could hardly triumph over excruciating pain unless the sensibility of the patient were neutralised by a sort of moral anesthesia. We know that, in the heat of battle, a severe wound is often received without being perceived; whilst, under ordinary circumstances, a mere scratch is felt acutely.

Since the production of these phenomena is due, in part, to the action of physical causes, in part to that of spirits, it may be asked how it can have been possible for the civil authorities, in certain cases, to put a stop to them? The reason of this is, however, very simple. The action of spirits, in these cases, is only secondary; they do nothing more than take advantage of a natural tendency. The public authorities did not suppress this tendency, but the cause which kept up and stimulated it, thus reducing it from a state of activity to one of latency; and they were right in so doing, because the matter was giving rise to abuses and scandal. Such intervention, nevertheless, is powerless in cases where the action of spirits is direct and spontaneous.