tions of living animals that
the Mesmerists asserted conflicts to occur. They unhesitatingly extended
their speculations to dead bodies. Some ancients dreamt that a catgut
cord made of a wolf's intestines would never strike in unison with one
made from a lamb's intestine; a discord of atmospheres renders the
phenomenon possible. It is still a conflict of corporeal emanations that
explains the other aphorism of an ancient philosopher: "The sound of a
drum made with a wolf's skin takes away all sonorousness from a drum
made with a lamb's skin."

Here I pause, Gentlemen. Montesquieu said: "When God created the brains
of human beings, he did not intend to guarantee them."

To conclude: Servan's witty, piquant, agreeably written pamphlet was
worthy under this triple claim of the reception with which the public
honoured it; but it did not shake, in any one part, the lucid, majestic,
elegant report by Bailly. The magistrate of Grenoble has said, that in
his long experience he had met men accustomed to reflect without
laughing, and other men who only wished to laugh without reflecting.
Bailly thought of the first class when he wrote his memorable report.
_The Doubts of the Provincial man_ were destined only for the other
class.

It was also to these light and laughing souls that Servan exclusively
addressed himself some time after, if it be true that the _Queries of
the young Doctor Rhubarbini de Purgandis_ were written by him.

Rhubarbini de Purgandis sets to work manfully. In his opinion the report
by Franklin, by Lavoisier, by Bailly, is, in the scientific life of
those learned men, what the _Monades_ were for Leibnitz, the
_Whirlwinds_ for Descartes, the _Commentary on the Apocalypse_ for
Newton. These examples may enable us to judge of the rest, and render
all farther refutation unnecessary.

Bailly's report destroyed root and branch the ideas, the systems, the
practices of Mesmer and of his adepts. Let us add sincerely that we have
no right to appeal to him in regard to modern somnambulism. The greater
portion of the phenomena now grouped around that name were neither known
nor announced in 1783. A magnetizer certainly says the most improbable
thing in the world, when he affirms that a given individual in the state
of somnambulism can see every thing in the most profound darkness, that
he can read through a wall, and even without the help of his eyes. But
the improbability of these announcements does not result from