From the point of view of modern hypnotism, Puységur's position is a most important one, more important, indeed, than that of Mesmer. His literary productions and his personal activity in the formation of the Loges d'Harmonie (organizations devoted to the study of animal magnetism) were the most influential factors in keeping alive the study of these phenomena after Mesmer's downfall, and in their revival after the long interruption of the Revolution. Puységur's views were at first identical with those of Mesmer; he believed in the magnetic fluid and the baquet and the crises; but his practices gradually dispensed with all these manipulations and regarded the action of the will upon the somnambules as the essential and sufficient method of effecting a cure. His conceptions were extremely fanciful, and the point of view of his later writings is considerably at variance with that of his earlier compositions. "Some day," he predicts, "after five or six thousand years of existence upon earth, mankind will admit that there is a fluid, or rather a conserving agent of their existence and their health, which they can utilize ... and direct for the benefit of their fellow-men by the simple action of their wills." This universal magnetism is regarded as acting directly through the human will; "croyez et veuillez" is his motto. The tree likewise acts upon the patients connected with it, through the magnetic action imparted to it by the will of the magnetizer. Puységur regarded what he termed the instinctive electro-magnetism of man as analogous to the force by which the chick imparts movement and life to the germ upon which she broods. It was, however, his practical influence, and not that of his decidedly fantastic views, which guided the progress of the antecedents of hypnotism. The contributions of his successors, as of his predecessors, cannot deprive him of the credit of discovery of the hypnotic condition and of the first clear appreciation of its importance. But the progress which Puységur's discovery had brought about was almost at once lost by the extravagant claims which were soon made for the somnambules in their prediction and direction of the course of disease. They came to be regarded as possessed of supernormal powers by which they could perceive the anatomical conditions of their patients; they predicted the future, or rather they were impressed in advance with a sensation of what was to happen--"_presentiment_" or "_optique preliminaire_"; they traveled in spirit to distant times and places; they were _en rapport_ with the magnetizer, hearing and obeying him alone, and interpreting his unexpressed thoughts and wishes; their remedies were declared infallible, and Puységur himself, after thirty years of experience, records that he had met with no case of a wrong prediction. The valuable discovery of an artificially induced condition, recognizable by definite physiological and psychological changes, was at once engulfed in a senseless search for the wonderful and the pursuit of fantastic theories.