can hope to correct any error in his own knowledge, unless he has the
courage to confide the error to those who can correct. La Place has
said, 'Tout se tient dans le chaine immense des verites;' and the mistake
we make in some science we have specially cultivated is often only to be
seen by the light of a separate science as specially cultivated by
another. Thus, in the investigation of truth, frank exposition to
congenial minds is essential to the earnest seeker."

"I am pleased with what you say," said Sir Philip, "and I shall be still
more pleased to find in you the very confidant I require. But what was
your controversy with my old friend, Dr. Lloyd? Do I understand our host
rightly, that it related to what in Europe has of late days obtained the
name of mesmerism?"

I had conceived a strong desire to conciliate the good opinion of a man
who had treated me with so singular and so familiar a kindness, and it was
sincerely that I expressed my regret at the acerbity with which I had
assailed Dr. Lloyd; but of his theories and pretensions I could not
disguise my contempt. I enlarged on the extravagant fallacies involved in
a fabulous "clairvoyance," which always failed when put to plain test by
sober-minded examiners. I did not deny the effects of imagination on
certain nervous constitutions. "Mesmerism could cure nobody; credulity
could cure many. There was the well-known story of the old woman tried as
a witch; she cured agues by a charm. She owned the impeachment, and was
ready to endure gibbet or stake for the truth of her talisman,--more than
a mesmerist would for the truth of his passes! And the charm was a scroll
of gibberish sewn in an old bag and given to the woman in a freak by the
judge himself when a young scamp on the circuit. But the charm cured?
Certainly; just as mesmerism cures. Fools believed in it. Faith, that
moves mountains, may well cure agues."