t our own knowledge is
in fault, whenever Nature appears inconsistent with herself? Surely
we have enough order around us to suggest, that all which to us
seems chance, is 'direction which we cannot see;' that all apparent
anomalies are but like those discords which, in the most masterly
music, prepare the transitions from one noble passage to another,
and are actually essential to the general harmony. In many
instances this is not mere conjecture. How much of fancied
imperfection and disorder has fled before our investigation! The
motions of comets at first appear to offer an exception to the
exact arrangements of the universe.--'They traverse all parts of
the heavens. Their paths have every possible inclination to the
plane of the ecliptic; and, unlike the planets, the motion of more
than half of those which have appeared has been retrograde--that
is, from east to west.' Yet have we been able to detect the
elements of regularity in the midst of all this seeming confusion,
and to predict with certainty the day, the hour, and the minute of
a comet's return to our region of the sky.

"Experience also shows, that apparently insulated and lawless
phenomena may not only be reduced to a law, but to a well-known
law; that many a familiar agent puts on strange disguises; and that
events, with which, in their mazy channels, we seem to be
unacquainted, may be perfectly recognised by us at their source.
Thus galvanism and magnetic force are proved, by recent
discoveries, to be only forms of electricity; showing that a fact
may be altered, not in itself, but in the circumstances that
surround it, and that complexity of development is perfectly
consistent with unity of design. Instances like these, while they
encourage us to enquiry, should teach us to believe that all which
is needed to vindicate the regularity of nature is a more extended
observation on our parts."--(Pp. 14-15.)

This is the highest and safest ground for the advocate of mesmerism to
tread; to support himself on this he has only to demonstrate his facts
beyond the possibility of a doubt, and the truth of the phenomena,
however inconsistent with previous experience, must in the end be
admitted. But to support him on this high ground his proof must be
demonstrative; he must be able to say--I ask not for faith, nor eve