Gradually Baron Reichenbach extended the range of his experiments, employing for that purpose, besides his own daughter, especially a Miss Nowotny, a sad sufferer from cataleptic attacks. She was able to distinguish, by the sensations which were excited in her whole system, more than six hundred chemicals, and arranged them, under his guidance, according to their electro-chemical force. Another sick woman, Miss Maiss, felt a cool wind whenever certain substances were brought near her, and by these and similar efforts in which the baron was aided by many friends, he ascertained the fact, that there is in nature a force which passes through all substances, the human body included, and is inherent in the whole material world. This force he calls the Od. Like electricity and magnetism, this Od is a polar force, and here also opposite poles attract, like poles repel each other. The whole subject, although as yet only in its infancy, is well deserving of careful study and thorough investigation.
The manifestations of so-called spirits have naturally excited much attention, and given rise to the bitterest attacks. In England, especially, the learned world is all on one side and the Spiritualists all on the other; nor do they hesitate to say very bitter things of each other. The Saturday Review, more forcibly than courteously, speaks of American spiritualists thus: "If this is the spirit world, and if this is spiritual intelligence, and if all the spirits can do, is to whisk about in dark rooms, and pinch people's legs under the table, and play 'Home, Sweet Home,' on the accordeon, and kiss folks in the dark, and paint baby pictures, and write such sentimental, namby-pamby as Mr. Coleman copies out from their dictation—it is much better to be a respectable pig and accept annihilation than to be cursed with such an immortality as this." To which the Spiritual Magazine (Jan., 1862), does not hesitate to reply. "We shall not eat breakfast bacon for some time, for fear of getting a slice of the editor of the Saturday Review, in his self-sought appropriate metempsychosis." It must be borne in mind, however, that spiritualists everywhere appeal to their own reason as the highest tribunal before which such questions can be decided, and to the laws of nature, because as they say, they are identical with the laws of practical reason. They believe, as a body, neither in angels nor in demons. Their spirits are simply the purified souls of departed men. Protestant theologians, who admit of no purgatory, see in these exhibitions nothing but the deeds of Satan. Catholic divines, on the other hand, and Protestant mystics, who, like the German, Schubert, believe that there exist what they curiously enough call a "more peaceful infernal spirit," ascribe them to the agency of evil spirits. In the great majority of cases, however, the spirits have clearly shown themselves nothing else but the product of the media. The latter, invariably either of diseased mind by nature or over-excited for the occasion, believe they see and hear manifestations in the outer world, which in reality exist only in their own consciousness. A Catholic medium is thus visited by spirits from heaven and hell, while the Protestant medium never meets souls from purgatory. Nothing has ever been revealed concerning the future state of man, that was not already well known upon earth. Most diverting are the jealousies of great spirits, of Solomon and Socrates, Moses and Plato—when the media happen to be jealous of each other! A somewhat satirical writer on the subject explains even the fact that spirits so often contradict each other and say vile things of sacred subjects, by the inner wickedness of the media, which comes to light on such occasions, while they carefully conceal it in ordinary life! If these spirits are really the creations of the inner magic life, of which we are just learning to know the first elementary signs, then the powers which are hidden within us may well terrify us as they appear in such exhibitions, while we will not be surprised at the manner in which many an ordinary mortal appears here as a poet or a prophet—if not as a wicked demon. Nor must it be overlooked that our memory holds vast treasures of knowledge of which we are utterly unconscious until, under certain circumstances, one or the other fact suddenly reappears before our mind's eye. The very fact that we can, by a great effort and continued appeals to our memory, recall at last what was apparently utterly forgotten, proves the presence of such knowledge. A state of intense excitement, of fever or of trance, is peculiarly favorable to the recovery of such hidden treasures, and there can be no doubt that many a medium honestly believes to receive a new revelation, when only old, long forgotten facts return to his consciousness. Generally however, we repeat, nothing is in the spirit that is not in the medium. The American spiritualist conjures up only his own countrymen, and occasionally some world-renowned heroes like Napoleon or Cæsar, Shakespeare or Schiller, while the cosmopolitan German receives visits from men of all countries. Finally it must be borne in mind that, according to an old proverb, we are ever ready to believe what we wish to see or hear, and hence the amazing credulity of the majority of spiritualists. Even skeptics are not free from the influence of this tendency. When Dr. Bell, the eminent physician of Somerville, Mass., investigated these phenomena of modern magic, many years ago, he promptly noticed that the spirits never gave information which was not already in the possession of one or the other person present. Only in a few cases he acknowledged with his usual candor, and at once, at the meeting itself, that a true answer was returned. But when he examined, after his return home, these few exceptional revelations, he discovered that he had been mistaken, and that these answers had been after all as illusory as the others.
There can be no doubt therefore, that modern magic, as far as it consists in table-moving and spirit-rapping, with their usual accompaniments, is neither the work of mechanical jugglery exclusively, nor, on the other hand, the result of revelations made by spirits. In the mass of accumulated evidence there remain however, after sifting it carefully, many facts which cannot be explained according to the ordinary course of nature. The power which produces these phenomena must be classified with other well-known powers given to man under exceptional circumstances, such as the safety of somnambulists in dangerous places; the cures performed by faith, and the strange exhibitions made by diseased persons, suffering of catalepsy and similar affections. If men, under the influence of mesmerism, in a state of ecstatic fervor, or under the pressure of strong and long-continued excitement, show powers which are not possessed by man naturally, then modern magic also may well be admitted as one of the means by which such extraordinary, and as yet unexplored forces are brought to light. All that can be reasonably asked of those who so peremptorily challenge our admiration, and demand our respect for the new science, is that it shall be proved to be useful to man, and this proof is, as yet, altogether wanting.
In Mexico the preparation for acts of magic seems to have been downright intoxication; at least we learn from Acosta, in his Hist. nat. y moral de los Indias (lv.), that the priests, before sacrificing, inhaled powerful perfumes, rubbed themselves with ointments made of venomous animals, tobacco and hempseed, and finally drank chica mixed with various drugs. Thus they reached a state of exaltation in which they not only butchered numbers of human beings in cold blood, and lost all fear of wild beasts, but were also able to reveal what was happening at a great distance, or even future events. We find similar practices, also, nearer home. The Indians of Martha's Vineyard had, before they were converted, their skillful magicians, who stood in league with evil spirits, and as pawaws discovered stolen things, injured men at a distance, and clearly foretold the coming of the whites. The pious Brainert gives us full accounts of some of the converted Delawares, who, after baptism, felt the evil spirit depart from them, and lost the power of magic. One, a great and wicked magician, deplored bitterly his former condition, when he was a slave of the evil one, and became, in the good missionary's words: "an humble, devout, hearty, and loving Christian." It is more difficult to explain the magic of the so-called Archbishop Beissel, the head of the brotherhood at Ephrata, in Pennsylvania, who, according to contemporary authorities "oppressed by his magic the father and steward of the convent, Eckerling, to such a degree, that he left his brethren and sought refuge in a hermit's hut in the forest! The spirits of departed brethren and sisters returned to the refectory at this bishop's bidding; they partook of bread and meat, and even conversed with their successors. There can be no doubt that Beissel, abundantly and exceptionally gifted, possessed the power to put his unhappy subordinates, already exhausted by asceticism of every kind, into a state of ecstasy, in which they sincerely believed they saw these spirits, and were subjected to magic influences. That such power has by no means entirely departed from our continent, may be seen in the atrocities perpetrated at the command of the negroes' Obee, of which well-authenticated records abound in Florida and Louisiana, as well as in Cuba.
The Indo-Germanic race has known and practised black magic from time immemorial, and