Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France | Date: 28 April 2011, 04:31
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Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France
By Robert Darnton
* Publisher: Harvard University Press
* Number Of Pages: 232
* Publication Date: 1968-01-01
* ISBN-10 / ASIN: 0674569512
* ISBN-13 / EAN: 9780674569515
This little book has a large purpose: it attempts to
examine the mentality of literate Frenchmen on the eve
of the Revolution, to see the world as they saw it, before
the Revolution threw it out of focus. So presumptuous
an undertaking must fail, for who can hope to peer into
the minds of men who have been dead for almost two
centuries? But it is worth attempting and may attain some
degree of accuracy through the use of neglected clues to
that mentality, which have been left scattered in the
scientific periodicals and pamphlets of the time, in scraps
of popular songs and cartoons that were hawked in the
streets, in the letters-to-the-editor and paid announcements
of publications that one might have found lying
about eighteenth-century drawing rooms and cafes, and
finally in private letters, diaries, police reports, and
records of club meetings that have survived in various
manuscript collections. Such material leaves a strong
impression of at least the interests of the reading public
in the 1780's, and these interests provide some surprising
information about the character of radicalism at that time.
They show how radical ideas filtered down from treatises
like Rousseau's Social Contract and circulated at the
lowest level of literacy.
Faced with the impossibility of knowing all the topics
of interest, even among the elite who left accounts of
them, I have limited this study to what seems to have
been the hottest topic-science in general, mesmerism
in particular. If the reader recoils with a feeling that this
may be indeed too surprising, too quackish a subject for
his attention, then he may appreciate the chasm of time
that separates him from the Frenchmen of the 1780's.
These Frenchmen found that mesmerism offered a serious
explanation of Nature, of her wonderful, invisible forces,
and even, in some cases, of the forces governing society
and politics. They absorbed mesmerism so thoroughly
that they made it a principal article in the legacy of attitudes
that they left for their sons and grandsons to fashion
into what is now called romanticism. It is not surprising
that mesmerism's place in this legacy has never been
recognized, for later generations, more squeamish perhaps
about the impure, pseudoscientific sources of their
own views of the world, have managed to forget Mesmer's
commanding position during the last years of the Ancien
Regime. This study would restore him to his rightful
place, somewhere near Turgot, Franklin, and Cagliostro
in the pantheon of that age's most-talked-about men. In
so doing it may help to show how the principles of the
Enlightenment were recast as revolutionary propaganda
and later transformed into elements of nineteenth-century
creeds. It thus may help one to understand how the
Enlightenment ended-not absolutely (for some still
take seriously the Declaration of Independence and the
Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen)-but historically,
as a movement characterizing eighteenthcentury
France. It may merely help the reader to taste
the flavor of the distant past. But if it achieves this last,
more limited objective, it will have been worthy perhaps
of his attention; for such tastes provide the pleasure in
the study of history.
Much of the pleasure that I have derived from my
own studies lowe to Harry Pitt and Robert Shackleton of
Oxford University. I would also like to record my gratitude
to those who supported me during the preparation
of this book-the Rhodes Trustees, the Warden and
Fellows of Nuffield College, Oxford, and the Society of
Fellows of Harvard University-and to those who read
it at various stages of its evolution-Richard Cobb,
John Plamenatz, Philip Williams, Crane Brinton, Jonathan
Beecher, and John Hodge. With a hospitality that would
have delighted their ancestor, the original Gallo-American,
the Bergasse du Petit-Thouars family made available to
me not only their papers but also the chateau containing
them.
In order to avoid cluttering the page with footnotes,
references have been grouped into long notes, in which
citations are listed according to the order of the quotations'
appearance in the text. Impossibly long eighteenthcentury
titles have been abbreviated with ellipsis dots.
The places and dates of publication of works are cited
as they appear on title pages, even in the case of such
obvious fictions as "'Philadelphia" or liThe Moon"; and
where the names of authors and the places and dates of
publication are not given, they are lacking in the original
works. Spelling and punctuation have been modernized,
except in citations of titles. I have done the translating and
have preferred to render "magnetisme animal" (often
shortened to "magnetisme" in the eighteenth century)
as "mesmerism," despite the claim of a modern expert,
who believes that "mesmerisme" was first used in the
early nineteenth century. 1 Actually, the French of the
1780's used it and "magnetisme animal" as synonyms.
Cambridge, Massachusetts
April 1968
1. Mesmerism and Popular Science 2
2. The Mesmerist Movement 46
3. The Radical Strain in Mesmerism 82
4. Mesmerism as a Radical Political Theory 106
5. From Mesmer to Hugo 126
6. Conclusion 160
Bibliographical Note 171
Appendix 1. Mesmer's Propositions 177
Appendix 2. The Milieu of Amateur Scientists
in Paris 178
Appendix 3. The Societe de l'Harmonie Universelle 180
Appendix 4. Bergasse's Lectures on Mesmerism 183
Appendix 5. The Emblem and Textbook
of the Societes de l'Harmonie 186
Appendix 6. An Antimesmerist View 189
Appendix 7. French Passages Translated
in the Text 193
Index 213
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