Mesmerism: The End of the Enlightenment in France

So you thought Mesmerism was just a primitive form of hypnotism, a precursor to that and, ultimately, psychoanalysis in the same way alchemy was a precursor to chemistry? In fact, it was many, many other things, as Robert Darnton methodically and (as always) entertainingly recounts in this work. He begins by outlining the enthusiasm for science - more often exuberant pseudo-science - which existed in France in the eighteenth century (an enthusiasm satirized in one section of Perfume). "Mesmerism suited the interest in science and 'high science' during the decade before the Revolution, and it did not seem to contradict the spirit of the Enlightenment." This section is amusing if only to see the range of creatively mad ideas which an ultimately valuable passion for science unleashed in this century so fertile in new ideas. Darnton then traces the rise not only of Mesmerism but of the opposition to it. This included a play which struck one of the most effective blows against the movement. Jefferson - a bit prematurely - noted in 1785 "Animal magnetism dead, ridiculed". In fact, the movement survived but drifted into supernatural territory Mesmer himself disapproved of. Darnton then explores the relation between Mesmer and radicalism, (One of the more moderate political figures associated with the movement was Lafayette.) The next chapter shows how this went further, inspiring political theories that drew on Mesmerism and managed to link it with, for instance, the ideas of Rousseau. "By injecting a Rousseauist bias into a mesmerist analysis of the physical and psychological relations among men, Bergasse saw a way to revolutionize France." The next chapter has the rather surprising title of "From Mesmer to Hugo" - surprising because this very eighteenth century movement endured in some form well into the next: "The spell that Mesmer had cast upon the French in the 1780's brought men of letters as well as political scientists under his influence during the first half of nineteenth century. Mesmer might be considered the first German romantic to cross the Rhine..." The territory explored through all this will certainly fascinate those with an interest in eighteenth century France, and in the ferment that surrounded the coming of the Revolution, but it is also worth reading for those who are simply interested in how ideas of apparently limited scope inspire movements that often surprise even their originators.