But the Hypnotist or the Clairvoyant appears, and announces a state of _magnetic sleep_, with a new set of phenomena dependent on it, resembling the dreams and visions of the night.

The facts are strange and startling; but, after recovering from our first surprise, we may calmly ask, what effect these facts, if established, should have in modifying our convictions respecting the essential nature of mind and matter; and we shall find that they afford no sufficient reason for relinquishing the doctrine of an "immaterial spirit," but that, on the contrary, these very facts, were they sufficiently verified, would open up a new view of the powers and activities of "spirit," such as might well fill us with wonder and awe.

"I have heard, times innumerable," says Professor Gregory, "religious persons declare, on seeing these phenomena, that nothing could more clearly demonstrate the immateriality, and consequently the immortality of the soul.

'In _clairvoyance_,' say these persons, 'we observe the mind acting separate from the body, and entirely independent of it.

How beautiful a proof of the infinite difference between _spirit_ and _matter_.'" It is a proof that we would be slow to adduce, for the facts are doubtful as well as obscure; but, for our present purpose, it is not necessary either to admit or to deny the truth of these facts; it is sufficient to say that the phenomena of Mesmeric sleep and the visions of Clairvoyance are not more inconsistent with the doctrine of an immaterial soul than the more familiar, but scarcely less mysterious, phenomena of natural sleep and common dreams.
It is, indeed, not a little remarkable that the profound and sagacious Butler expressed himself in the following terms, long before the phenomena of Magnetism and Clairvoyance were spoken of as subjects of scientific study: "That we have no reason to think our _organs_ of sense _percipients_ ...