It will, no doubt, readily occur to the minds of those who are at all versed in the scenes now witnessed from time to time that the occurrences, so vividly represented in the pictures already referred to, and those described as occurring among the patients of Mesmer under the influence of holding the iron rods attached to his bottles and iron filings, are from time to time reproduced in these our modern days on the platform of the hypnotist, by the faith-curer, and amongst the pilgrims to Lourdes. But as we are less apt to speak now of demoniacs and possessed, these appearances are usually characterised by words selected from a pseudo-scientific and not from the theological vocabulary. I may say at once that I am now leading up to the demonstration that the conditions induced, whether of convulsion, cataleptic immobility, languor, submissiveness, trance or acceptance of suggestion and command, may be shown to be due to a nervous condition or mental state arising in the individual subject either from physical or mental excitation; and further that such conditions, by whatever distinctive names their varieties may be called, are not and never were due to any healing power or to any fluid or magnetic influence or mesmeric or hypnotic power resident in the operator.

It is a common delusion that the mesmerist or hypnotiser counts for anything in the experiment. The operator, whether priest, physician, charlatan, self-deluded enthusiast or conscious impostor, is not the source of any occult influence, does not possess any mysterious power, and plays only a very secondary and insignificant part in the chain of phenomena observed. There exist at the present time many individuals who claim for themselves, and -some who make a living by so doing, a peculiar property or power as potent mesmerisers, hypnotisers, magnetisers, or electro-biologists, One even often hears it said in society (for I am sorry to say that these mischievous practices and pranks are sometimes made a society game) that such a person is a clever hypnotist or has great mesmeric or healing power. I hope to be able to prove what I firmly hold, both from my own personal experience and experiment, as I have already related in the Nineteenth Cenbury, that there is no such thing as a potent mesmeric influence, no such power resident in any one person more than another; that a glass of water, a tree, a stick, a penny-post letter, or a limelight can mesmerise as effectually as can anyone.

A clever hypnotiser means only a person who is acquainted with the physical or mental tricks by which the hypnotic condition is produced; or sometimes an unconscious impostor who is unaware of the very trifling part for which he is cast in the play, and who supposes himself really to possess a mysterious power which in fact he does not possess at all, or which, to speak more accurately, is equally possessed by every stock or stone.