necessary that he
should alarm the devout by miraculously interfering to assuage human
suffering.

We have given above as many instances as our space will permit, of the
asserted phenomena of mesmerism; and now to return to Mr Townshend's
book.

In taking a general view of the lines of argument adopted by the author
to support the possibility or probability of mesmerism, we perceive they
are of two sorts, essentially different, and in some measure
inconsistent with each other.

1st, It is very properly argued, that our whole knowledge of the normal
course of nature is derived from experience; that a law is a mere
generalization from that experience, and is not any thing intrinsically
or necessarily true. Thus, if the sun were to rise in the west
to-morrow, instead of in the east, it would at first sight appear to be
a deviation from natural laws; in other words, a miracle. If, however,
the latter circumstance were wanting, after the first sensation of the
marvellous had subsided, the philosopher would enquire, whether, instead
of being a deviation from a law, it were not a subordinate instance of
some higher law, of which the period of history had been too short to
give any co-ordinate instances; and were it found, by a long course of
experience, that in every 4000 years a similar retrocession of the earth
took place, a new law would be established. Applying this to mesmerism,
it is said our notions of sleep and waking, of sight and hearing, and of
the possible limits and modes of sensation, are derived from experience
alone; we cannot estimate or understand the _modus agendi_ of a new
sensation, because we have never experienced it. If, then, it be proved,
by the acts of A, B, or C, that they attain cognizance of objects by
other means than those which any known organ of sensation will permit,
you must admit the fact, and by degrees its _rationale_ will become
supported by the same means as all other truths are supported, viz. by
habitual experience. Its law is, indeed, nothing but its constant
recurrence under similar circumstances. To take Mr Townshend's own mode
of enunciating this--

"Are we entitled to conclude, in any case, that, because we have
not hitherto been able to assign a law to certain operations, they
are therefore absolutely without law? Are we to assert, that the
orderly dispositions of the universe are deformed by a monstrous
exception; or is it not wiser to believe tha