"But what does science do with this fact? Nothing but announce it, and then proceed to dig among molecules and their related agitations for the solution of the mystery."
[This is what certain scientists do, but their follies are not chargeable to _Science_, nor to the whole body of Scientists. The ablest thinkers to-day, the deepest inquirers, look to the powers of the soul, and the new anthropology traces these powers to their localities in the brain.--ED. OF JOURNAL.]
"How old is this fact? As old as the race. At one time it was called necromancy, at another witchcraft, at another the inspiration of God, at a subsequent time animal magnetism, at another called after one of its more modern discoverers,--mesmerism--now hypnotism--which is only another name for magnetic sleep--if anybody knows what that is--or for somnambulism. Common sense tells common people that it is only an abnormal manifestation of the power that gives one person control over another, or enables one person to influence another. The simple every-day habit of exacting a promise from your neighbor to do a certain thing, or for you to make a like promise, and execute it. Sickness is a partial compliance with the conditions of mortality--death being the complete process. So the hypnotic experiences are the completed illustrations of the common power which we call personal influence. That is all. But that is not mysterious enough for learned people--it is not scientific enough--as everybody can understand it.
"Then, too, it suggests another thing that is fatal to it in the estimation of the teacher--it suggests that what we call the human mind or soul is a potential thing, that acts through the every-day machinery of our bodies, and may be more or less within the grasp of the common mind. There is a higher plane of knowledge than that of mere physical science, and if the theologian mistook its teaching, it is no reason why the pursuit of that knowledge on this higher plane should be ignored. Hence it is that this discovery by Charcot and others, to which we allude, has as yet been barren of fruit, because the methods of science to which the discoverers are wedded forbid the admission of the psychic problem that underlies the remarkable phenomena.