every reported breach of her assumed
uniformities is incredible, because impossible, until the possibility
has been proved by some fact which is then named, erected into a class,
a cause, a law, and used to explain away similar facts formerly denied,
and is thus taken into that bundle of generalizations called the "laws
of nature"? The ancients assumed all heavenly motion to be circular of
necessity, and where facts gave against them, they patched the matter up
with an epicycle or two. Are not hysteria, hypnotism, and
thought-transference of the nature of epicycles? It is now confessed
that the mind can so affect and dominate the body as to produce blisters
and wounds by mere force of suggestion and expectancy; that a like
"faith" can cure, not only such ailments as are clearly connected with
the nerves, but others where such connection is not yet traceable. And
this is supposed to tell in some way against like marvels reported by
hagiology, as though they were explained by being observed and named.
Yet what did that supposed marvellousness consist in, except in a
seeming revelation of the power and superiority of mind over matter, and
of things unseen over things seen and palpable; and in proving that
there were more wonders in heaven and earth than were dreamt of by a
crude and self-satisfied materialism? They were taken as evidence of a
circumambient X-region where the laws of mechanics were set at defiance
and where the fetters of time and place were loosened or cast aside.
Such an X-region being supposed by every supernatural religion and
denied by most of those who deny religion, and on the same grounds, its
establishment by any kind of experiment is rightly considered in some
sort to make for religion. Indeed, it is just on this account that the
evidence for it is so opposed by those who are pre-occupied by the
anti-religious bias of contemporary science. But unless hysterical
effects can be shown to be ultimately due, not to mind, but to matter
acting on matter, according to methods approved by materialism, hysteria
remains a word-cause and no more, like the meat-cooking quality of the
roasting-jack.

Hypnotism is a kindred cause in every way. It means sleep-ism; yet
manifestly it deals with characteristics which are utterly unlike those
of sleep; and it is precisely these that need to be explained away in
conformity with received laws, unless we are to find in these phenomena
evidence of such modes of being an