of a book taken at hazard from the library, and by telling the hour upon a watch they held to him. He awoke in a quarter of an hour.”

One naturally doubts whether the physical influence of the Od force can extend to this enormous distance; whether the agency ought not to be regarded as purely psychical; whether, in short, the will of the speaker may not have been the exclusive agent employed.

I think that there is a disposition, among experimenters in mesmerism, to attribute too much to the agency of the will. There was with me in the autumn of 1849 a young lady, who was extremely susceptible of mesmerism. A gentleman who came with the family had been in the habit of entrancing her daily; and at last she was so sensitive that a wave of his hand would fix her motionless. His presence even in the room affected her; and if he then tried to mesmerise her sister, she herself invariably became entranced. The operator was a person of remarkable mesmeric power. Then at my request, made unknown to her, he went to the end window of the room, and, looking out upon the Rhine, tried at the same time with the most forcible mental efforts to will her into sleep. The attempt failed entirely. Another day that he was in my room, about fifty feet from the room in which the young lady was sitting, he tried again by the will to entrance her. But it was all in vain. Therefore, if the will ever acts independently of Od influence, I am disposed to think that its action in producing trance must be infinitely feebler than the direct use of Od.

However, some are convinced of the positive agency of the will in mesmerising. The following statement by Mr H. S. Thompson of Fairfield, made in a letter to Dr Elliotson, published in the Zoist, admits the inferiority in force of the will to the material agency

of Od, at the same time that it goes far to prove its efficiency.

"I have succeeded," says Mr Thompson, "in arresting spasms, and taking away every species of pain, and in producing intense heat and perspiration, by the will only; and in many instances without the knowledge of the patients, who have been all unconscious of the power I have been exerting, until after the results have occurred. At the same time, I have generally found that the passes in combination with the will, or attention, most readily produce the effects we desire; and that manipulations are much less fatiguing to the operator than the exertion of the will."

Of an extremely sensitive patient, who was suffering with rheumatic pains, Mr H. S. Thompson observes, "A few passes put her to sleep, though she was moaning as in great pain, and scarcely seemed to notice what I was doing. After sleeping for a few minutes, her face became composed, and she showed no symptoms of pain; but as I could not get her to speak in her sleep, I awakened her. She looked very much surprised, and said that she felt very comfortable and free from pain. I told my friend that she was so sensitive that I thought she might be put to sleep by the will in a few minutes. The bed-curtains were drawn, so that she could not see or know what was going on. I fixed my attention upon her, wishing her to go to sleep. When we looked at her two minutes afterwards, she was fast asleep. It was agreed that the following day, though I should be thirty miles off, the experiment should be tried again. A lady went at the time fixed on. I purposely postponed the time half-an-hour, thinking that the woman might have become acquainted with my intention, and go to sleep through the power of the imagination. The lady's account was, that she called upon the woman at the time

agreed on, and at first thought that the experiment was going to fail, as she saw no symptoms of sleep; but that in half-an-hour afterwards the patient went into a deep sleep, which lasted some time. After this she went to sleep every day for a fortnight at the same time, though I did not will her to sleep. She says that she felt in a dreamy and happy state for some days after."

I might add many similar facts to the above interesting observations. The mass of evidence existing on the subject establishes beyond all doubt that patients have been thrown into trances by persons who have previously mesmerised them in the common way, at distances which seem to preclude the idea of any physical agent having been the medium of communication between the two parties. The operation seems to have been in those instances mental. Then how is such a result to be explained? or by what expression can it be brought to tally with the principles I am endeavouring to substantiate? I shape the answer thus:—

The first step is ordinary mesmerising; in other words, the operator directs an Od-current upon the patient, the Od in whose system is thereby disturbed; and initiatory trance ensues as the consequence.

Secondly, The mind of the patient thus entranced enters into relation with, or is attracted towards, the mind or person of the mesmeriser. I remember witnessing a most decisive instance in which the operation of this attraction was singularly manifested. The place was Dr Elliotson's waiting-room; the patient, a young man whom Mr Simpson had entranced. Mr Simpson then moved about the room, standing still at several points in it in succession. The young man seemed attracted towards Mr Simpson, to whom he drew near each time he stopped; then he pressed against Mr Simpson, jostling him out of his place, which he planted himself in-his countenance

bearing an expression of huge delight at what he had achieved. But in half a minute he began to look anxious and uneasy; and again-his eyes being shut all the whilehe set off in search of Mr Simpson, and repeated the same scene. There exists, it would appear, an attraction between the (mind of the?) entranced person and (that of?) his mesmeriser, or (that of?) any other person with whom the entranced person has secondarily come into relation.

Then, thirdly, It may be presumed that, in phenomena which are purely mental, space and distance go for nothing. But if this supposition be admitted, it would be as easy for a mesmeriser to entrance by a mental effort a sensitive and habituated patient at a hundred miles off as at the end of the same room. The phenomenon thus viewed is wholly exoneural. The one mind is supposed to be acutely sensitive to the influence of the other. Each of the two minds, though in different degrees, energises, it may be imagined, beyond its bodily frame. And the mind of the patient feels the force of the mesmeriser's will acting upon it, and slips as it were at once, by the accustomed track, out of the normal into the abnormal psychico-neural relation.

Still I cannot get rid of a lurking notion that, in the phenomena last considered, the Od-force contributes an element of physical or physico-dynamic influence. For, putting for the moment aside the idea of mental action, what is to prevent two living bodies, that may be in Odrelation, or in exact Od-unison, from physically influencing one another at indefinite distances?

IX. Trance-Diagnosis.-From Boppard, where I was residing in the winter of 1845-6, I sent to an American gentleman residing in Paris a lock of hair, which Col. C—, an invalid then under my care, had cut from his own head, and wrapped in writing-paper from his own.

writing-desk. Col. C— was unknown even by name to this American gentleman, who had no clue whatever whereby to identify the proprietor of the hair. And all that he had to do and did was to place the paper, enclosing the lock of hair, in the hands of a noted Parisian somnambulist. She stated, in the opinion she gave on the case, that Col. C— had partial palsy of the hips and legs, and that for another complaint he was in the habit of using a surgical instrument. The patient laughed heartily at the idea of the distant somnambulist having so completely realised him.

The mesmeric discrimination of disease involves three degrees.

First, the clairvoyante placed in relation with the patient, either by taking his hand, or by handling a lock of his hair, or anything impregnated with his Od, feels all his feelings, realises his sensations, and describes what he sensibly labours under. Her account of the case thus obtained will be more or less happy, according to the extent of her previous knowledge respecting ordinary disease.

Secondly, the clairvoyante, if in a higher state of lucidness, actually sees and inspects the interior bodily construction of the patient, whose inward organs are, as it would seem, lit with Od-light, for her examination. Or she sees them by their Od-light, being in mesmeric relation with the internal frame of the patient.

Thirdly, the clairvoyante, if still more lucid, foresees what will be the progress of the malady; what further organic changes are threatened; what will be the patient's fate.

The two first points require no further comment. I reserve my comments upon the last for another head.

X. Mesmeric Treatment.-Let me first advert to the use